Tales from Citadel Space: Of Ghosts and Mercs
by SickleYield
Summary: ExoGeni needs a little help cleaning up their latest catastrophic lab accident.  Salarian mercenary Aelin Dec is up to the challenge, but will he survive his new coworkers as well as his intended target?   On hold for some time, may or may not finish.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Introduction:

This section has to do with the lore of the Mass Effect games and, as usual when I'm writing fanfic, here I will stipulate to what I do and don't intend to make up. I'll be making a lot of things up, of course. This _is _going to be a novel-length fanfic, in all probability; for reasons unknown to me, I seem to have lost the ability to write anything shorter. But here's where I'll talk about some specifics. If this doesn't interest you, scroll on down to the beginning of Chapter 1.

My rule of thumb is that I follow canon where I find it clearly stated. If it's vague, there are gaps, or points are simply not addressed or highly contradictory, then I consider myself allowed to resolve those circumstances in whatever way I wish. I will disregard fanon where it doesn't fit what I plan to do. Fanon means things fans believe but which are never stated in-game, in Codex, or by the game's developers, like the belief that asari physically lack vaginas (I don't plan for that to be relevant to this story, I just chose it at random because it makes no sense to me; where do these people think that baby asari come out of?).

Since I'm aware that the ME games are huge, and that my experience of those games may differ from every other player's, my go-to source for canon information/confirmation is the Mass Effect Wiki. Readers, please feel free to let me know if I wander too far off the beaten path in a way that's indicated in Codex or directly stated in dialogue (not in fanon). I will try to specify in future authors' notes when I plan to play with what is and isn't said in canon, but I don't want to go further than that at this point so as to avoid spoiling my entire plot in the first introduction (for that matter, racial lore is so huge that I couldn't possibly stipulate to every point I will be referencing).

Some early points to get us started:

The events of this story will be set in late 2185 or thereabouts on the timeline, after the events of Mass Effect 2, and probably will not concern a single character from on-board the Normandy (although canon NPCs will probably be present or mentioned).

If ME3 comes out while I'm in mid-story, as seems likely given the usual length of my fics, I'll try to adapt as necessary.

It's easy to forget or miss, but there is in fact a universal translator at work among characters in the games, most of whom never learn each others' languages. According to the Wiki, some beings use externals, and some use subdermal implants. Hanar in particular need them to communicate with anyone else because their language consists of bioluminescent flashes (the hanar voices you hear in the games are coming from their translation equipment).

The wiki is unspecific regarding certain aspects of hanar biology. I'll have to make this up (based mostly on the Cnidarians they resemble) and hope for the best.

While the original Thorian from Feros is very dead, ExoGeni certainly collected many specimens and cuttings from its carcass (viz. another ME1 quest wherein you find an ExoGeni outpost that was experimenting with Creepers), and we all know plants and their asexual regrowth, don't we?

Similarly, the Feros Thorian was crazy, hostile and paranoid; but it was also thousands of years old, and there's no reason to assume it was always that way.

The sensory suite used by the Thorian is poorly described and basically unknown. Believe I will be improvising like crazy on this topic. It undoubtedly did communicate its wishes telepathically to its spore-thralls and to its clones.

I'll be mostly going with the ME2 version of certain lore and gameplay, e.g. Neural Shock as a "tech" instead of a "Medicine" power, the fact that gel can no longer be used for hacking, etc. For the most part these changes and their in-game explanations just make more sense to me.

Salarians hold the bonds of political or organizational loyalty well behind family (the game's scummiest mercenaries still tend to be working with their siblings, cf. the Blue Sun leader in the Archangel mission if you talk to him).

Salarians have no native concept of sexual desire or relationship, and reproduction is generally a sociopolitical matter, without physical contact between the parties whose gametes are involved (salarians are haplo-diploid external fertilizers). Its significance is for the position of a clan as a whole, not for the individual's personal relationships.

Apparently this doesn't apply to how they feel about asari. The game implies that asari attractiveness is partly neurochemical, so it's not surprising that they might be attractive even to an otherwise nearly asexual race.

Liara T'soni's naïve protestations to the contrary, if it's sentient, some asari somewhere will try to meld with it. If the rachni and volus are not exceptions, then I assume no thinking being is.

Owing to the confusing proliferation of planetary names and locations, and the many quests associated with them, I may use in-game locations or I may just make new systems up. This is entirely within the realm of astrogeographic possibility; the absolutely huge number of solar systems and planets in a given "cluster" means that only a fraction of the existing systems could possibly be covered in Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2 (and, for that matter, even with FTL the odds of them all being explored are, ahem, astronomical). Zakera Ward didn't seem seedy enough for my purposes, which is why I invented Garani (by no means a stretch, since the Wards are supposed to be huge enough to contain millions of beings).

In-game there are "extranet terminals," and bandwidth is said to be more or less rationed. However, it's also stated that ordinary people are able to readily access simulstims and other content (especially considering Cerberus Daily News updates). I've assumed that it should be logically possible to receive extranet content on some form of plugin or attachment to an omni-tool. It'd just be too bizarre if the far future had internet but lacked wifi.

For non-science folk who may not know, and thus find some following descriptions odd: A scientist's name being on a paper does not mean that scientist did all the work described in the paper; in fact, a big chunk of the hands-on repetitive stuff will have been done by assistants (they would be grad students at most American universities). Famous, prominent scientists in movies and on tv are often shown working away in a lab by themselves. This is nonsense. Among other good reasons, no one person could possibly get all the needed tasks done in a timely fashion (on most projects, anyway).

Always feel free to chime in with constructive criticism of the writing itself. This will be my first real experiment with temporal discontinuity in a storyline, so criticism on that aspect of the narrative is particularly solicited. Fanfic readers and reviewers have had a very real effect on my writing style over the years, and I firmly believe it is a positive one.

Enough of the chitchat, on with the show.

Chapter 1

THEN

_ Excerpt from _The Cloning Of Organs From Biped Races Using a Botanical Intermediary_ by Drs. Laena Variden, Irving Johansen, and Jaetin Inoste. This is an abstract circulated solely within ExoGeni Laboratory Delta on Ilium, copies on file with base branch's Records division and pending eyes-only upper-level Review._

...All taken from the same cutting, and regrown from unicellular cultures with identical modifications, excepting the unmodified Control Group and Thorian Experimental Culture 01 (hereinafter TEC-01; see enclosed for more details). Owing to the nature of the original specimen, particularly the potentially neuroaffective nature of its sporulation, the control group has certain modifications common to all specimens but will not be exposed to the active portion of the experiment. Owing to his military background with the Systems Alliance, Dr. Johansen is in charge of the special precautions to be implemented and of the special personnel required, while the direct genetic engineering will be supervised by Dr. Inoste.

Volunteers of course cannot be identical, but have been documented extensively and with as much accurate history as we are able to convince them to provide. This process has been materially facilitated by Dr. Variden and her research assistants, without whose special interpersonal skills this project would certainly have been impossible.

Owing to the local availability of volunteers willing to work within the required contract and for the compensation offered, the races used in initial tests are as follows (in no particular order): asari, drell, turian, human, salarian and krogan. Applications from quarian and volus volunteers were rejected owing to the additional complications posed by environmental suits, although we propose to include them in a conjectural Phase II of the project wherein other materials-replicating properties of the organism are tested. For Phase I, no volunteer will be exposed to the organism with _any _clothing or instruments other than a simple gown of inorganic fibers. Once again, Dr. Variden was particularly helpful in persuading the krogan volunteers to part with their weapons.

Our initial experimental group is comprised of two each of the above races, excepting the asari, of which there are four. As per the agreements signed by each, the volunteers were not told the goals or nature of the experiment, merely what they will be personally expected to do. Nature of the contracts signed means ExoGeni and its employees will be held harmless in the event of accidental fatal exposure of volunteers to any of the experimental cultures and/or the control group. Research to date seems to indicate fatalities are unlikely, but once again, precautions have been taken.

A more complete description of the modifications done to the original organism's genetic code by Dr. Inoste is enclosed, but in brief, the variations are thus:

_Control Group: Selective growth acceleration. Deactivation of Gene Group 38387-G, responsible for production of mobile subordinate cultures ("creepers"). Suppression of Gene Group 12006-A, believed responsible for production of advanced nervous tissues responsible for conscious reasoning. Suppression of Gene Cluster 3334-G-01, responsible for production of neuroaffective spores. Will not be exposed to volunteers. See attached for composition of fertilizers._

_TEC-01: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to asari only._

_TEC-02_: _Control group modifications. Will be exposed to drell only._

_ TEC-03: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to turians only._

_ TEC-04: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to humans only._

_ TEC-05: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to salarians only._

_ TEC-06: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to krogan only._

_ TEC-07: Control group modifications. Will be exposed to all volunteer races in sequence._

The experiment will begin with accelerated culture of the organism, proceed through exposure of sedated volunteers to the pod structures observed in the largest growth of the organism, and conclude with in vitro testing of any viable resulting organ cultures. These methodologies were developed by Dr. Variden with consulting assistance from Drs. Inoste and Johansen. In vivo tests will not be conducted until the conjectural Phase II...

NOW

John Stark shifted his weight slightly as he leaned against the wall of the alley. In any place less aggressively hygienic than the Wards of the Citadel, this would have resulted in possibly stained and certainly malodorous garments. Garani Ward was by no means the cleanest place on the Citadel, but its Keepers and its automated cleaning apparati kept it much cleaner than the average city on Earth. There were no windows, and few doors. The walls were unbelievably high, and colored a plain gray except for the occasional dispirited and fizzling animated advertising panel. These were placed high enough up that the average biped would not be able to reach them. The more bored and impoverished among the local citizenry had thrown litter at them instead, and occasionally caused a bad spot or a crack. The difference between this and one of the less wealthy areas of the greater cities of Earth was that here the automation had taken the litter away afterward.

Stark hadn't seen Earth in some years, of course. He'd clawed his way out from under the seedy underbelly of what had once been New York and New Jersey and was now one great conjoined organic whole, a megatropolis if you subscribed to the fancy wording of the newsanchors, a complete and total shit hole if you asked John Stark. He had emerged from this crucible (another word Stark didn't know) with muscles as lean and hard as he could make them, a scar that cut across one cheek like a lightning bolt, and roughly the same emotional makeup as a carpet shark.

There is always work for such people. Stark, who was by no means lazy, had never had trouble finding it. Now he was waiting here in this alley for one particular hanar, a merchant named Trevend who had made some poor choice or other. Probably it had experienced a suicidal moment of bravery and declined to pay protection to the sort of people who would be likely to employ John Stark. He didn't know the specific identities of his employers, or care. All he cared about were the substantial sums of currency they had paid him for several very similar tasks in the recent past. Had he been inclined to worry, the fact that one such person had been C-Sec might have caused him some concern, but Stark was confident that there had been no witnesses whether living or automated (as, indeed, there would be no witnesses today).

One or two beings might have seen a human of medium height in a long, black trench coat walk into one end of this alley. Even his fellow humans probably wouldn't remember anything beyond the trench coat, which would go into a trash slot as soon as Stark was finished. He would lose his powered switchblade and his gloves at the same time. All of them would dissolve in a matter of a few hours without light exposure. Such gear was not cheap, but then, neither was John Stark.

He didn't have long to wait. He heard a thin wail before anything else, like a cat having its tail pulled. Then a hanar bobbled around the corner in front of him and came drifting down the alley. Its long, tapering tentacles writhed in obvious distress, and something seemed to be wrong with its contra-gravitics: its luminous pink wonton of a body was tilted slightly sideways. Tiny lights flashed here and there in the pattern of great distress that its translator was rendering as the noise he heard.

"Oh, please, honored human, render aid to this terrified and hunted one," it gabbled as it came closer. The voice was the same androgynous tenor that nearly all hanar translators seemed to use. "Horrible and violent persons have already attempted to do it an injury - " the rest apparently was untranslatable.

Stark was momentarily annoyed by this, since no one else was supposed to be working this particular job, but it was not in his nature to be much puzzled (any more, indeed, than carpet sharks generally are). He stepped forward. A flick of his wrist deployed the powered knife, the blade humming slightly with the electrical charge that would make the hanar's last moments uniquely excruciating.

It was then that a dull gray salarian stepped out of a doorway behind him and fired a Neural Shock charge into the back of his head. His knees had only just begun to buckle from the crippling pain when the salarian's other hand came around and drove a sharpened plastic spike into the soft spot at the bottom of his skull. Stark was dead before he hit the ground.

The salarian and the hanar looked at each other for a moment. The latter tipped slowly back to an even keel, its tentacles now hanging tranquilly straight. The salarian's clothing and his skin were almost the same sort of mottled gray, making him nearly invisible in the dim alley.

"This one expresses appreciation for your sense of timing, Aelin Dec," the hanar said.

"Likewise, Iynder," said the salarian. "Looks like he couldn't tell you from Trevend." He brushed his three-fingered hands one against the other, a very minimalist gesture for a member of a species known for physical twitchiness. He did not attempt to retrieve the plastic spike he had used to kill John Stark. Its special materials were already rapidly corroding from exposure to his blood and brain matter. When his corpse was discovered, there would be no indication of who had killed him.

"The distinguishing of one hanar from another is often difficult for persons of differently arranged species," said Iynder, for this was indeed its face name. "This one was interested to note how easily you recognized it."

"I pay attention," said Aelin. He had immediately noticed the recessed dark lines that crossed its foremost two tentacles. Scars looked different on a hanar, and one didn't see them often. He had also noticed the small sheath that appeared to be attached, entirely without straps, to the bottom side of its body between its tentacles. It was the same color as Iynder's body, but not the same texture. "Would you like to join me for dinner?"

"Provided that no sexual proposition is intended, this one would be greatly pleased to do so," said Iynder.

"I didn't mean anything like that," said Aelin, stifling a noise that might have been considered rude. "I'll spare you the facts of salarian reproduction - "

"This one is aware of them," said the hanar. Aelin blinked his great gray eyes. Hanar, with whose obsessive politeness he was very familiar, never _ever _interrrupted other beings. Which meant that, unlikely as it seemed -

"You were joking," he said. "That's unusual."

"This one apologizes for its lamentable sense of humor," said Iynder. "Alas, it is an incurable affliction. But let us discuss these things as we perambulate, yes?"

"There's a nice walk through the next couple of buildings to that street with all the restaurants," said Aelin. "I think I found a place that can serve you and me both." He twitched his left last finger in the gesture that activated his omni-tool. The gauntlet of orange light sprang up around his left arm; he used his other hand to rapidly key in the combo that would send confirmation of John Stark's death to the nearest extranet receiver. Another flick of his finger turned the apparatus off.

"This one notes that its salarian colleague seems to have thought this through ahead of time," said Iynder. Like all hanar, it had no visible eyes, so he couldn't tell if it was looking at him. "Should it be suspicious of a trap?"

"Logically, I suppose so," said Aelin. He pressed the activator beside the door. It slid open. A white corridor stretched on ahead toward the building's public areas. It was low-rent office space, the kind of place where no one would notice the comings and goings of various species. He started down the hall ahead of the hanar, a courtesy so that it would not have him behind it. "But it isn't one. I often go out to dinner when I've finished a job. I like eating. And I looked for a place that could serve you because I wanted to see if you'd accept. I've never met a hanar in my own line of work."

"Ah, curiosity. A very salarian trait. Your appetite will not be negatively impacted?" the hanar drifted up beside him as the door _clicked _shut.

"By what? Oh, you mean by killing the human. Not really," said Aelin. "It's just part of being a mercenary."

"This one was unaware its colleague was a mercenary," said the hanar, this time with such exaggerated politeness that Aelin suspected it of being sarcastic. He filed the small gesture of its foremost left tentacle for future reference. It had touched two of its three tiny fingers together. "Perhaps you are with the Blue Sun company?"

"I've got a few cousins there," said Aelin. "I work freelance."

"And yet you do not describe yourself as an assassin," said Iynder. "Though it is a very crude term, this one has not previously found others reluctant to use it. It confers a certain form of status."

"I do other kinds of jobs, too," said Aelin, trying not to sound defensive. "I don't _just _kill people."

"Ah," said Iynder, or at least that was what its translator rendered.

"How do you describe your own job, then?" asked Aelin. He said it quietly, as they were passing through a lobby area. It wasn't much more than a yellowed box of a room with a single chipped glass desk. The lumpy half-stuffed chair was unoccupied. At this time of night, the receptionist was probably off in the nearest break room taking in the stimulant of his, her or its choice. Few places in the Wards were ever completely closed, but some shifts were certainly busier than others.

"This one is proud to call itself an interpersonal facilitator," said Iynder.

"I'm not sure that translated correctly," said Aelin. "Did you say interpersonal facilitator?" He turned down a corridor to the right and continued on toward another door.

"Certainly," said Iynder. If it was still suspicious, it seemed quite willing to drift along beside him. "This one's regrettable but necessary work is to smooth out interpersonal difficulties that cannot be solved by lesser means than the removal of one party from this temporal plane. Occasionally it does take other work when such tasks are scarce. Acting as a decoy is not very dignified, but it is better than continued unemployment."

"I've never met a hanar assass – interpersonal facilitator," said Aelin. "Don't the drell usually take care of it when a hanar needs help with that kind of problem?"

"This one is not generally employed by its conspecifics," said Iynder. "There are reasons of religious prejudice which this one would not choose to address at this time. It begs your pardon."

"Not necessary," said Aelin. "I'm not offended very easily. And by the way, is that a gun you're carrying?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

THEN

_Memo from Dr. Johansen to Dr. Inoste:_

Jaetin,

Sorry to bother you when you're wrapping up the blastocyst assemblies, but I've got a security concern with TEC-07's enclosure.

The trouble is that the main experimental room originally had six of those reinforced clear-fronted chambers. The seventh and eighth were added later. They're just as powerfully fortified (I'd bet anything they experimented on varren here before we got here). The problem is with the plumbing. I've had my assistants set up a dedicated plumbing system so that the enclosures' watering and drainage systems don't connect internally to the rest of the building's. This was fairly easy to do because EC-1 through 6 were set up with isolated plumbing to begin with, just good experimental practice for a potential animal enclosure. It's even possible to sample outgoing fluids for chemical composition – the spectrometer attached to the main array is damned old, and the shunts are creaky, but it all still works.

Anyway, It's not an issue with E-8 because there's no specimen there (Laena proposes using it as a break room for the lab assistants, pending your approval, which strikes me as a typically asari thing to suggest – not that that makes it a bad idea). The problem is that E-7, where we propose to put TEC-07, is also a "new" room and its plumbing connections weren't set up discreet from the main building (somebody took the lowest bid, I'll bet). Unless you're prepared to have us completely rip the floor up before we put the soil in, I don't see what we can do about it except turn off the valves to that room, run another couple of pipes over from E-6 and increase the water pressure so both specimens get what they need.

I've already talked to Laena about this, and she suggested I ask your opinion.

Irving

_Reply from Dr. Inoste to Dr. Johansen:_

Dr. Johansen,

Why was this not brought to my attention earlier? It's far too late to change the order of the specimens now, not without utterly fuddling the paperwork, confusing the assistants, and risking a very real ruination of the experiment through poor documentation. Now we'll have to risk TEC-06 choking off 07's water supply and destroying the combined portion of the experiment!

But recriminations are quite pointless now. Do what you suggest. Make sure there is a pressure monitor on the connection between E-6 and E-7 so we can absolutely assure E-7's water supply is adequate. And I don't care how much more work it takes you, turning off the valves is _not _an adequate solution for isolating the specimen from the building's main plumbing. I want those valves turned off, then separated, then blocked with a biorepulsive plastic.

I assume I need not remind you what is likely to happen if a specimen gets a chemosynthetic tendril into our clean water supply. They should be incapable of achieving the size and tissue specialization required for sentience now that my modifications are nearly complete, but it was not possible to absolutely guarantee this while retaining the level of specialization needed to grow the cloning pods we want for the experiment. It is absolutely crucial that we have complete control over the water and nutrient supply of _every _specimen to prevent any possibility of such growth!

Let Laena have her break room. I don't know who spends more time chasing after the grad students, her or you, but if it means I can keep an eye on all of them it's worth it. Sometimes I think humans and asari are just as bad as each other. If I believed in any sort of deity, I would thank him, her or it that there was at least one salarian on this project!

Dr. Inoste

_ Memo from Dr. Johansen to Dr. Variden:_

Laena,

Well, he took it about like I expected. You can go ahead and have your girls set up the break room (do you mind if I call them girls? Is that offensive to a mono-gendered person?) and put a drink machine and a cot in there at least. I, meanwhile, will be busy fiddling with the damned pipes for the next forty-eight hours, or however long it takes to ensure we get it ready in time for Inoste's cotyledon units to be planted. Sometimes I think he's applying more of the growth accelerants just to keep the rest of us from slacking off. Whatever you do, don't let him see this memo. I don't want to listen to him recite it to me from his goddamn perfect memory for the next month.

Irving

_ Reply from Dr. Variden to Dr. Johansen:_

Dear Irving,

Thank you for your willingness to pose the question for me. Jaetin has been very short with me since he caught me grooming Meavath's scalp a couple of days ago, and I'm afraid he might have refused me out of hand had I asked him directly. It's so very difficult to convince other species that all interactions between asari are not sexual in nature. I appreciate your understanding and sensitivity.

And yes, of course you can call them girls. Not a one of the darlings is older than seventy, although I wouldn't expect them to admit it to you (they are terribly shy about it). Or perhaps you were concerned that the gender characterization might offend? Not at all. Asari are quite accustomed to being viewed as unequivocally female by other races, and if we feel the truth is a bit more complex, it is a small concession we willingly make.

Don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything I can do to make the next few days easier for you. And don't worry, I've already deleted your message. Your secrets are safe.

Sincerely,

Laena

NOW

"Why, yes," said Iynder. "It is a miniaturized Carnifex hand-cannon with a grip customized for my manipulators." It raised one tentacle to wiggle its three tiny finger-ends. "It is so difficult to find weapons suitable for wielding by a hanar. This one notes that you do not appear to be carrying a projectile weapon yourself."

"I try not to get attached to anything," said Aelin. "I've got one or two things on me in case of emergency."

A sideways glance might be nearly undetectable in a human, but it's very obvious in a salarian.

"Have no worries, friend Aelin," said Iynder. Its translator must be better than the average; it actually conveyed an audible overtone of humor through the flatly androgynous voice. "This one intends you no more harm than you intend it."

"Sounds fair," said Aelin. "It's through here." He punched the activator on another door and stepped out into another alley. They were near the opening to the street, and from here lights and noise beckoned.

This section was a pedestrian-only area at ground level, like most of the Wards. Air traffic zipped past far overhead between the tops of the skyscrapers. Out of the building's shadow, it was possible to see black sky and stars. One of the other arms of the Citadel was permanently visible as well, like a looming, distant roof. Aelin noted it in passing as he threw a rapid look around the street. Nothing showed up threatening on the subliminal ladar he had come to depend upon for early warnings.

"There's a transit post not far off," said Aelin.

"This one has its own transportation, thank you," said Iynder. "Is this the restaurant to which you referred?" It gestured across the busy walkway in front of them toward a sign on the opposite side. Its aging neon sign showed a crude representation of several races standing in a group, a floating hanar among them. It was hardly more than a pink and flickering blob, and the salarian beside it looked like one of the elastic-bodied toys Aelin remembered playing with as a child. He had dissected it a week after he was given it. There had been an argument about that, in fact, because it had belonged to one of his brothers...

Aelin shook his head slightly to dismiss the memory. It would be there, clean and perfect, whenever he felt like looking at it again.

"Yes, that's the place," he said. "It's unichiral. There's a place that serves turians and quarians next door." And that place had a much more tasteful sign, an animated media panel showing video montages of diners chatting together.

"This one hopes the dining experience is superior to the exterior décor," said Iynder. It started across the street. Aelin walked beside it. He was far less conspicuous than was the hanar, and in fact people routed more willingly around the pair of them than they would have around just Aelin. Even a krogan stepped around them, staring curiously at the shimmering tentacled creature.

"The guide to the district's restaurants says it's only a dive from the outside," he said. "And there's an extranet station with a wireless attachment for a small extra fee, if you don't mind me working while we eat."

"This one has often been chided for its lack of table manners," said Iynder. "Perhaps it will look for further employment as well."

Aelin was intensely curious as to how it intended to do this, since he had never seen a hanar use an omni-tool, but he bit his tongue. Native salarian inquisitiveness was _not _a healthy trait to express in his line of work, and Iynder had already caught him out on that once. So far he'd been deeply impressed by its forbearance. Most hanar needed special training and counseling to deal successfully with other species, but it hadn't batted an eye at anything he'd said.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

The restaurant was busy, even at this time of night, but the wait was not long. An asari waitress brought Aelin a tall stool and Iynder a similar piece of furniture with a concave top surface that cupped the forward half of its body. They ended up approximately face-to-face across a high, round table. Other such tables filled the restaurant from just behind the hostess podium by the front door all the way back to the sliding barrier that must lead to the kitchen. There was quite a panoply of smells, but they were mostly pleasant. The lighting was dim, letting in the splash of neon and headlights from outside.

Iynder brought its two forward tentacles up to the table top. An orange square of coherent light flickered into being between them. Aelin tore his eyes from it quickly, bringing up his own omni-tool to fill the silence. _It must have some sort of subdermal implant array for the projection, _he deduced. He made a small gesture to create a media window at the top side of his gauntlet's interface, told it to search for the extranet signal, and paid the requisite credits to sign on.

It would no doubt be a few minutes before he was connected. He looked back at Iynder to find it sitting quite still, though whether it was regarding him or its own peculiar interface was impossible to determine. A quick glance around the restaurant resulted in a further negative reading on his internal threat meter. Almost without thinking, he tallied up the patrons and wait staff by race and color scheme. There were at least three different shades of asari present. He'd been developing a theory about hiring practices and that race, actually. One generally tended to find asari of all one shade of blue in one place, or else of widely differing shades without much overlap. He suspected employers of various races of exercising an aesthetic color bias -

"This one has found something that might be of interest to its colleague," said Iynder.

"What? That is, I beg your pardon. Thank you." Aelin blinked rapidly as he returned his attention to his tablemate.

"Perhaps this one might pass it directly?" said Iynder. Aelin reached slowly across the table with his omni-tool so that the hanar could brush a media screen toward him. There was a long pause as the data transferred (with the attendant bandwidth necessary to maintain it), and then the screen popped up on Aelin's own interface. He drew the omni-tool back toward himself and read the page rapidly. It was an advertisement on one of the employment boards he normally frequented.

"ExoGeni Corporation on Ilium," said Aelin. "I've worked for them before."

"This one has had similar experiences, it suspects," said Iynder, effortlessly reading the tone of his voice (or whatever input its translator rendered). "But you will note that the parameters of the operation involve minimal supervision once we are briefed."

"We?" said Aelin.

"This one has already applied for the position listed. They are seeking a group of specialists, after all."

"I'm honored," said Aelin, startled by this evidence of goodwill. A few more finger-flicks sent his credentials and his acceptance of the offered rate. "I'm in for the tech position, of course. What's your slot? Oh. I see it."

It wasn't marked _assassin, _of course. That would have been too obvious. But it was clear from the description that what was wanted was a being capable of taking life without compunction and with a minimum of mess and noise. Iynder had not been exaggerating about its preferred mode of operations, it seemed.

Aelin also saw the _other _two positions that were sought. _One biotic, one heavy weapons specialist. _

The first one would probably be an asari. They were more common than human biotics, and more of them were willing to do the work. The second... It was just dimly possible that the second one would be a human or turian.

_And it's possible that the Dread Pirate Essul is hiring us to find his lost treasure, _thought Aelin.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

THEN

_Excerpt from Dr. Jaetin Inoste's Status Report 02 on Experiment I-Delta-201:_

As expected, only one of the three implanted cotyledons in each chamber actually germinated. Even at this early stage of development, the organism is highly competitive even with its cloned siblings (not at all surprising in a botanical analogue). Accelerated growth proceeded entirely according to plan in all specimens; each one now entirely covers the available floor space of its chamber, resembling low-growth plants found on many different worlds. The dominant pigments are both green and brown, as reported in Specimen 0 of Species 37, so it appears that our attempt at replicating conditions of Ferosian sunlight has had adequate results. There is already very distinct specialization among some tendrils of the plants in the direction of chemoreceptivity and other less identifiable sensory apparati.

Now, six weeks after project commencement, we have begun calling in the volunteers.

We've erected an opaque curtain between the specimen chambers and the main work area to prevent each volunteer from seeing what's being done with the others. Since the necessary light sources are within each chamber, this will not negatively impact the growth of the experimental organisms. Volunteers have agreed to have a harmless non-invasive organ cloning procedure performed upon them while under full general anesthetic, which will be administered and supervised by Dr. Variden (the only project team member with patient care experience).

At present we have one sedated volunteer in each of chambers TEC-01 through 07 (with none in the control group chamber, of course). Chambers are supervised at all times by assistant personnel with appropriate monitoring devices in order to ensure that pod-cloning is taking place rather than physical absorption of volunteers. The asari volunteers in 01 and 07 proved somewhat more restless than anticipated, risking damage to the pods, but the problem was brief in duration. Species 37 apparently produces some form of paralytic adaptable to different species. We highly recommend further study of this substance or substances for future projects. The medical possibilities alone are staggering.

With the growth acceleration modifications, and with the considerable amount of nutrition we presently provide to each specimen, the seven volunteers were fully encased in literally minutes (please see enclosed full documentation; the only distinct difference was the unsurprising additional time required to enclose the adult male krogan in TEC-06). Membranous swellings consistent with the formation of additional biostructure are visible in TEC-01 and 07, but not yet in the others. It is clear that cloning will be a much slower process than pod formation, requiring days at minimum. We as yet have no hypothesis as to why asari seem to result in more rapid cloning response; Dr. Johansen's suggestion that "everyone likes asari" may safely be rejected as flippant.

NOW

Aelin Dec and the hanar Iynder made separate arrangements for their trip to Ilium. It was not difficult to book passage between the Citadel and one of the largest commercial worlds in the Terminus Systems, but the security precautions were stringent. Aelin made do with a number of disassembled components tucked into his luggage plus a few more non-metallics tucked into his clothing. Not even hardened ceramics would get past the screeners; everything he carried would have to be plastic and porous enough not to show up on the scans.

But that was an old game. He stood patiently while a pair of turians conferred over the scan results (one had an interesting scar and a broken skull spine, marking him as a veteran), received his clearance to board, and walked into the airlock. The beige-walled enclosure was big enough for two krogan to walk abreast. The Virtual Intelligence, which was skinned to resemble a buxom asari in a long dress, was dwarfed by it. The image quality was excellent, only glowing faintly around the edges rather than appearing to be made of coherent light like the more stripped-down administrative VIs on the Citadel. Aelin thought he could probably guess the manufacturer.

"Welcome to Silverwing Spaceflight's First Class Flight B202 to Ilium," she said, bowing slightly in a universally inoffensive greeting. The door hissed shut behind Aelin. "Please remain stationary for decontamination before proceeding to your seating area. Your seat is number five. You will find instructions in the event of an emergency packaged near your seating area and marked with this sign." She held up her hands. A card with a white feathered wing superimposed over a red circle briefly materialized between them.

"I understand," said Aelin. He watched the white bar of light that was the decon field sweep toward him. He hated the cold tingling feeling.

"Policies of the Silverwing Corporation require that I inform you that solicitation or harassment of the flight personnel will result in fines and possibly in legal action," she continued, a dimple in her azure cheek taking the sting out of the reminder. "We can provide references to appropriate establishments once we reach our destination."

"I'll bet," said Aelin, trying to stay relaxed as the decon field swept back and forth over him. "But no thanks."

"Stimulant and non-stimulant beverages are available upon request and at no additional charge. My name is Elsvet, and I will be your VI interface for any information you require during the flight," said the VI. "Thank you for choosing Silverwing, and enjoy your journey."

The opposite door slid open as the decontamination field switched off. Aelin went to find his seat. He settled into the thick upholstery, ordered a fruit juice from the live human flight attendant he shared with his neighbor across the aisle, and prepared to read what there was of his briefing.

It was hardly three hours later that he stepped out of the airlock again. Most of that had been Silverwing's passenger liner waiting in queue behind Alliance and Council ships with more urgent business. The actual journey from relay to relay was incredibly short, hardly more than an uncomfortable flip-flop sensation across his inner tympanum.

Getting into Nos Astra, Ilium's capital, was much easier than getting onto the Citadel had been. But then, Ilium was a garden world, and its ever-burgeoning economy had been more-or-less built by asari corporations. It had suffered nothing of recent events in Widow system. And when officials on Ilium were vague about current events, it could safely be assumed that they were hiding industrial secrets, not whatever dreadful thing the Council was so loudly not talking about on the news.

Aelin had a third cousin who claimed to know all about it. Chorban's credit was waning with the rest of the clan, though. Most Decs didn't mention his name now. He'd been a little too loud with his suppositions and slid down the slippery slope from "eccentric, possibly a genius" (which was not a term lightly awarded among salarians) to "public embarrassment, probably crazy."

Most of them didn't talk to Aelin now, either. The reasons were different, of course.

A human was waiting for him just past the concierge's podium. She wore a white tunic and trousers that did not quite have the look of a uniform. The skirt was long on each side and short in the center. Aelin habitually noted the texture of the fabric, the cleanliness of her shoes, and the fact that her height was near the center of the distribution for human females he had seen. Her hair, that very uniquely human feature, was dark in color and matched her eyes. The tiny skin fold across the inside of each eye was probably a marker of ethnicity and not an individual peculiarity like Aelin's skin tone. To Aelin's eyes she looked pleasing enough, though the effect was purely aesthetic. Another of her own species would probably find her very attractive, he thought.

She was holding a media panel that said _Aelin Dec _in dancing electronic letters.

"I'm Aelin," he said as he approached. The woman smiled very slightly, a degree intended to be polite rather than indicate enjoyment.

"Good afternoon, Sir," she said. "I'm Sarah Tang. I will be your interface with the Corporation during your stay here on Ilium. Please follow me to our transport. Your hanar colleague is already waiting there." Her tone indicated he had been waiting for some time, and by extension, so had she.

_Iynder doesn't ride public transport, _Aelin thought._ Not even first class. Interesting._

"Lead on, Ms. Tang," said Aelin. He pronounced the honorific in a common human language rather than in his own, where there was no equivalent. Sarah Tang glanced at him thoughtfully, but did not comment. She pressed the two edges of the panel together, reducing it to a thin rod, and turned to precede him through the doorway that led to Nos Astra proper.

Technically, they were outdoors, but the area near the customs entrance made it easy to forget this. Plants grew in planters made from coppery metal, not in soil. The same concrete composed the floor, the railings (they were far, far from the ground here), and the nearest walls. Buildings both near and far were so high that they blocked out much of the blue sky overhead. Aelin took these things in as he simultaneously cataloged the pedestrians (about half asari and half various other races), tried to decide how long it had taken to find this many plants that could grow in partial shade, and listened to a nearby animated advertisement for what seemed to be an asari scalp-grooming product.

A couple of asari took very obvious notice of Sarah Tang. One ostentatiously patted her tentacular scalp, blue eyelids lowered.

_ Hypothesis confirmed, _thought Aelin_. _No one took a second look at him.

They skirted the great city's trading floor as they moved toward the parking area for transports. Here the noise level was just a little higher. Merchants politely hawked various and sundry wares, from souvenirs to weapons to entire suit systems, and others simply informed each other conversationally about the current situation in stocks.

Most of the visible transports were of the "flying mitten" design popular on several worlds, with a long extension beside the cockpit and no visible wings, wheels, or landing gear. The opaque material of one such vehicle slid back as they approached. The hanar who sat awkwardly plumped into a corner of the seat waved a scarred fore tentacle.

"This one renders greetings again to its newfound colleague," said Iynder. "Welcome to Ilium, Aelin Dec."

"Thanks, Iynder," said Aelin. "It's good to see you." He looked at Sarah Tang, but she evidently planned to enter the vehicle last. Since there looked to be plenty of room, he shared the bench with Iynder. Ms. Tang's body language, arms tight to her sides and hands firmly clasped at just below waist level, said she didn't want to sit next to either of them.

"You two have met?" she said as she sat down.

"Briefly," said Aelin. "Who will our other colleagues be?"

Sarah tapped the divider between them and the presumptive location of the driver. The canopy slid down. It was apparently one-way, offering an excellent view as the car rose smoothly into the air. "You'll meet them when we get to Laboratory Delta," she said.

_Damn._

"You mean the heavy weapons specialist is a krogan," said Aelin Dec. Sarah Tang pursed her lips (Aelin generally found them a more reliable barometer of human emotion than eyes).

"If you want to renegotiate your contract, I'm not the one you should talk to," she said.

"I don't have a problem," said Aelin. "I'm concerned that he will. Does he _know _he'll be working with a salarian?"

Ms. Tang flattened her lips into a thin line.

_Damn, DAMN, damn._

"I see," said Aelin.

"ExoGeni expects professional behavior from all of its employees, whether temporary or permanent," Tang said coldly.

"How has that been working for them lately?" inquired Aelin. Sarah Tang glared at him.

Aelin looked at Iynder. He was almost certain it was smirking.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Many plants really do have amazing genetic backups which animals lack (a big reason why they handle nuclear radiation better than we do). They can afford to do this because they don't have to exercise those resource-heavy animal options such as moving and making noise, so obviously some suspension of disbelief is still asked for here. ;)_

Chapter 4

THEN

It did not know itself at first. All it knew was thirst and hunger, both for the light above it and for the things it could only draw up from below. Even then, when it was no nearer sentience than a houseplant, there was a third drive. It was because of this that it could not resist the urge to encapsulate biomass it could not absorb, and it was this urge, subverted by genetic engineering, that drove it to spend energy and resources it could hardly spare in building its first duplicate.

The duplicate was taken away when it was half done. Worse yet, the donor from which it had made the copy was violently excised as well. Under other circumstances the young organism might have gone dormant or into shock, like a bulb plant with its first leaves cut away. Here there was abundant light and nutrients to spare. It stored the genetic information it had gained, closed the new wounds in its body, and unconsciously sought a way to interpret the data. The most basic biological programming drove it to seek further nutrition in order to build the energy-expensive neuroprocessing cells it needed. (Dr. Jaetin Inoste believed he had excised all of this; but the organism's genetic backups were many, and some were better hidden than any animal's.)

In fact, this is what happened in all six of its clone-siblings as well, though it was aware only of the neighbor whose chemical output occasionally colored its water supply. The difference was that the six others found their progress irresistibly blocked. This particular organism, however, was in Chamber 07, the chamber with the imperfectly severed plumbing connections. It reached out with its questing tendrils, which had long since passed the imperfect barrier of the floor's drain, and found a valve blocked by a hardened plastic seal. There was a tiny crack in the plastic. It was only just big enough to insert the spiraling end of a tendril. Then the tendril grew.

In a matter of hours, the action of other tendrils wrapping around the pipe spun the valve control less than two centimeters. Raw sewage began to seep in past the growing crack. The first tendril was allowed to wither, and absorptive root tips rapidly grew in to take its place.

Several meters away, underneath the thickest growth of the organism's biomass, the first nerve cells began to proliferate. This process was slower. It took several days to make any real difference. During this time a second alien body was left in contact with the same area where it had grown a pod before. The organism hesitated for almost five minutes before it took the risk of again engulfing a body.

By the time it was robbed of this second body of data, several days later, the new neurons were sheathed, connected, and beginning to fire. It lacked the intelligence to register annoyance yet, but it did recognize pain. It had enough memory cells built now to recognize that intake would remedy its discomfort, and to calculate the odds that more food might be found where it had found food before.

Down below the floor drain, where no prying eye could see, tendrils probed other valves. Most were simply impenetrable, but one more crack was found. Again the tendril grew and split the plastic, and again the root tips quested where it had been. This time they found only water. This was not really needed. The organism's cells were fully turgid within their individual walls now, and it had much less need of hydrogen and oxygen than it did of nitrogen and carbon. A little directive regrowth turned that valve off again.

By the time they brought its third copy subject, this one very different from the preceding two, it was intelligent enough to use tendrils to pry up the drain cover. Then it was able to send thicker roots down to the pipes whose barriers were uncracked. Once they were in place, cells were destroyed from one side of each rough tube and added to the other, slowly tightening their grip over hours.

One pipe held hot water. That one was blocked with fast-hardening mucous secretions minutes after the crack began to seep, that being the knee-jerk reflex speed of the organism at this point. One held more cold water, which was allowed to seep but not opened further. And one held chemical contaminants the organism had never encountered before, both organic and inorganic.

This might have easily been fatal to the growing being before it ever achieved the intelligence of a terrestrial primate. But ExoGeni, for all its ethical shortcomings, was very strict regarding its laboratory practices. No corrosive was poured down the drain without first being carefully neutralized. The result was more fixable elements and several metallic cofactors which the organism received with an alacrity approaching glee. The proliferation of functional neurons proceeded at an astounding rate. An intelligence approaching, but totally unlike anything human was achieved in less than a day. Its hunger for new data absorbed it to the exclusion of all else. It began to experiment with faster-twitching nerves to supply its need to rapidly import sensory information from the more outflung portions of its anatomy.

By the time it was three-quarters finished cloning its third subject, it had created a modified statocyst whose villi rotated it to and fro at a constant rate based on the decay of an enzyme cofactor. Now it had a method of keeping time. When its captors brought the fourth cloning subject, it had deduced to within a minute the length of the interval for which it would be allowed to keep this one. And by then, it had built another very specialized form of tendril which it used to very carefully pierce the roof of the paralyzed subject's mouth.

Three minutes later, it was receiving data from its first contact with an intelligent mind.

One minute after that, it had begun to grasp the concept of language.

Thirty seconds after that, it realized the human was trying to scream.

NOW

Aelin followed Sarah Tang out of the car and into an elevator with Iynder gliding along beside him. It either still had its weapon, or had managed to obtain a new one and a new camouflage sheath very quickly. The human woman was silent for the duration of the long elevator ride, but now she seemed less annoyed and more worried (she kept nibbling at the lower part of her lip). Aelin tried to enjoy the view of Ilium's busy sky traffic. He had the feeling it would be a long time before he had leisure to think of it again.

Finally, they stepped out of the elevator and into a large open space. Aelin's comprehensive glance took in what seemed to be a laboratory that covered an entire floor. The floor was white tile. There were computer workstations and fume hoods around three of the walls, and plumbed benches down the center. There were several hospital beds large enough for use with any species up to krogan size. Aelin also took note of the ominous steel table with the tall rim and the drain at one end.

The fourth wall was lined with glass-fronted chambers. All the sliding doors were open. Six were empty. The seventh was empty, too, but there was a large hole in the floor. The eighth held a cot, a table, and a machine that appeared to sell nonalcoholic beverages. Everything was cleaned and deactivated. Whatever research had gone on here, it was plainly over.

A slim asari and a drell stood near the steel table. The asari stared down at it with her arms folded tightly around herself. She wore skintight black trousers, matching boots, and a white halter top, emphatically civilian garb. She was a fairly dark shade of blue. All of her skin except the front of her face was tattooed with an organic pattern of stripes in metallic teal. The effect was surprisingly gaudy. She looked up at them with eyes the color of chlorinated water as they approached.

"You must be our technician," she said politely. "Good afternoon." Beside her, the drell turned from contemplating the glass chambers. He wore a utilitarian bodysuit of dark green and black. It clung to a figure that was unusually thin even for that lean reptilian race. His skin was a dull and uniform green, even in the little scales on his temples and on his gaunt cheeks, where some pattern variation was almost inevitable.

Aelin couldn't imagine where his weapons were, but he never doubted that the drell was armed. His movements as he came toward them were careful, precise, obviously trained.

The drell's rapid scan, slick green-black eyes flickering, clearly indicated he had divined the same about Aelin. He looked between the hanar and the salarian with hardly any attention to Sarah Tang. He didn't appear to notice her at all until she said,

"I'm sorry, didn't you get the notice? We've filled all four positions."

"With more efficiency than I would have supposed," said the drell. His voice was deep and mellifluous. He looked back at the other two with his arms still placidly folded behind his back. "Aelin Dec and Iynder the Heretic. My name was Drene. I could wish we had met under other circumstances, but I'm afraid it can't be helped. I am the bearer of a message."

_Iynder the Heretic?_ thought Aelin. Then he thought, _Wait. My name _was?

"Oh, god," said Sarah Tang. "How did you get in here?"

Aelin already held a plastic spike in his right palm. Drell weren't like krogan. There were so very many obvious targets...

"The same way I intend to leave," said Drene.

Tang turned and ran for an alarm panel. The drell made no move to stop her. Aelin frowned. Beside him, Iynder had one tentacle folded up against its belly, no doubt on the grip of its weapon.

"If you pursue us, we will have no choice but to protect ourselves," continued Drene. His tone was conversational, even a little sad. "This branch - _I_ - recognize your skill and merit, and would grieve to see you destroyed. But you must understand. Great is our sin, and great must be our penance; but we _must _survive. The one you seek is the last of its kind. Be warned."

He turned and walked quickly back to the seventh chamber. Aelin was not surprised to see him crouch gracefully, slide into the hole in the floor, and vanish.

"Why the hell didn't you stop it?" Sarah Tang demanded, now back from the panel and looking furiously flushed. "It shut off the alarm circuit! I've had to call security on my omni!"

"You didn't tell us to," Aelin said reasonably. "And he didn't try to attack us. I don't think he was even armed."

"This one sees in somewhat different wavelengths than do you, and is sure of it," said Iynder.

"Oh, that's great. Just wonderful." The woman shivered once.

"What's wrong, Sarah?" asked the asari. She patted the woman gently on the shoulder. "Why are you afraid?"

"You don't understand, Mivi," said Sarah Tang, not bothering to deny this. "Didn't any of you read your briefings?"

"Of course," said Aelin. "It said we're supposed to find some lost property of yours and deal with the terrorists who stole it." He deftly nudged the plastic spike in his hand back up into his sleeve. "So was that a terrorist, or ExoGeni property?"

Tang's wild look said he'd hit home.

"I can't tell you that," she said. "The authorization is _levels _above my head. And anyway, it's irrelevant. If you see him again, stop him. Dead or alive, it doesn't matter which." She shivered again. "There will be others."

"The briefing was not specific as to the number we should expect to encounter," observed Iynder.

"I wondered about that, too," admitted the asari. "Do you know how many people we might have to, to stop?" She patted the human again. "Sarah?"

"Nobody knows," said Sarah. "But the number will get larger the longer it takes you to find where they're based. Remember that." She looked around quickly. "I don't think the surveillance ever came back up in this room, so I'll risk telling you this one thing. They'll be from different races, even races you wouldn't expect to work with each other. They'll be off somehow, like that one was off. It won't always be as obvious as a pigment difference, but if you look for it, you'll see it." She looked apologetically at the asari. "That's really all I can tell you. You've got all the leads we have as to where they went."

Sarah Tang stopped speaking abruptly as the sound of the elevator rising became audible. Aelin did not turn to look that way until he was sure nothing was coming back out of the hole in the floor. Then he was in time to see a krogan step into the room.

"I'm late," he said. "Did I miss anything?"

Sarah Tang laughed hysterically and ran past him into the elevator. He turned to watch the doors close. Then he looked back at the other three.

"What the hells was that about?" he demanded. At first hearing, most salarians couldn't tell one krogan voice from another; they were all the same aggressive basso rumble. Aelin had the feeling he'd be able to recognize this one again. It had a slightly wheezy intonation, as if the speaker were asthmatic. Breathing disorders were almost unheard of among a rapidly regenerating race, so Aelin suspected it had more to do with the great slash of a scar across the krogan's yellow throat. Otherwise he looked a great deal like most other krogan Aelin had seen: a thick-limbed creature with a turtle-like mouth and chin, a widow's-peak of hardened carapace above his small eyes, and an unbalancing hump on his upper back under his armor. The three digits per hand and the digitigrade legs were all he had in common with Aelin's own species. The overall effect was of a salarian child's nightmare, a monster out of the closet.

Aelin recognized the armor as a Scorpion III set, not a particularly puissant model. It was form-fitting, and the krogan had taken the time to paint it black. Rusty splashes of paint formed a rough triangle on the left breast.

"This one is afraid you have missed the excitement," Iynder was saying. "We have had a brief but very curious conversation with a person whom we initially assumed to be an applicant to your own position. You are the heavy weapons specialist, are you not?"

"Yep," said the krogan. He reached up and patted the butt of a shotgun that was holstered on his back. "Didn't bring the real big stuff, though. That's why I took so long getting here. I had to fill out a whole bunch of forms at customs. Asari love their goddamned red tape. No offense, lady." He nodded at the asari, an incredibly courtly gesture for a krogan. She smiled back.

"None taken. I prefer to be called Mivi," she said. "What shall we call you?"

"I'm Daragrad Ellix," he said. "Take it you're the biotic."

"That's right," she said. "This is Iynder, the..."

"Interpersonal facilitator," said Iynder.

Ellix snorted, immediately raising Aelin's estimate of his intelligence. "That's a good one."

"I'm Aelin Dec," said Aelin, thinking that he might as well get it over with. "I'm the technician."

The krogan turned to regard him with a slit-pupiled crimson eye.

"Hmph," grunted Ellix. "Think you can work with a krogan, Aelin-clan-Dec?"

"Yes," said Aelin. He cocked his head. "Can you work with a salarian, Ellix-clan-Daragrad?"

Ellix growled deep in his throat. His grab for the front of Aelin's shirt was fast, but not fast enough. Aelin stepped inside his grip, flicked each wrist in turn, and raised his hand to the krogan's eye level.

They stood there for a moment. Ellix seemed to be trying to focus on the ten-inch plastic spike that Aelin was holding not-quite-against his right eye. Aelin was equally aware of the giant hand whose fingers barely touched the back of his neck.

"You put that together pretty quick," said Ellix. "Think you can get to my brain before I break your neck?"

Had he been speaking to any other species, Aelin might have tried to say something clever at this point. In the event, what he said was,

"Yes. I can."

Ellix appeared to consider this. "Most salarians kill through a scope," he said. "From a long ways away."

Aelin felt a compliment was called for, now that a measure of equality had been established.

"It's the only safe way to kill a krogan," he said.

"Yeah," said Ellix. "It is." He lowered his arm. "So you're not one to do things the safe way."

Aelin stepped back, popped the two sections of the spike apart, and tucked them away with a practiced set of movements.

"Only if that's empirically the best way to get things done."

"This one has seldom found this to be the case," said Iynder.

"Me, neither," said Aelin Dec.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

THEN

The organism hardly knew what to do. It was absorbing some very troubling concepts, a massive amount of fragmented memory, and a great deal of sensory input for which it had no frame of reference. It did recognize that the other creature was now conscious enough to be in pain. It brought in a second tendril beside the first, a tiny chemosynthetic member.

It had to guess based on its current knowledge of the creature's – the _man's -_ biochemistry combined with its own instincts. The substance it introduced seemed to work. It took a minute or so for the paralyzed man's brain to stop its – no, _his -_ incoherent ranting and shrieking. (It understood the concept of pronouns, but the concept of gender was as yet not fully grasped.) Then consciousness lapsed utterly, to the organism's considerable relief. It made careful note of the structures it had found, particularly the ocular connections. It was not able to understand the man's memories of what he had "seen," but the sheer amount of data encompassed by this category seemed to indicate it was a useful sensory suite.

It went on with the duplication process. It had gained little information about its captors, but the man seemed to think only parts of himself would be copied, and did not know about the organism at all. This was puzzling, and suggested a difference between his perception and the perception of those others who kept taking away the unfinished duplicates.

Partway through this process, the organism became aware that the man's metabolism was slowing. The organism queried his hindbrain with the telepathic tendril it still had in place. The creature was gradually and inexorably slowing to a halt. Its attempt to calm him had poisoned him instead. The organism _could _synthesize an antagonist, extrapolating from the composition of that first too-hasty dosage, but it would take long hours which the man did not have.

Here the organism found a horrifying fact. It felt parts of itself curl inward, trying to shrivel at the revelation.

It knew its own body and its own substance. It knew that, if it were divided in two, each half would grow into another self as time passed (though each would be lobotomized, and neither would be exactly the same as it now was). But this was not how the man knew himself. The end of this branch, this culture, this isolated structure, would be the end of the self. There would be no others.

There was a word, deep in the dying man's subconscious, for a creature that killed other sentients and consumed their substance. That word was _MONSTER._

NOW

"I want a look at that alarm before she gets back," said Aelin.

"This one will investigate the crawlspace," said Iynder.

"Be careful, Iynder," said Mivi, with every evidence of sincerity. "We do not know whether the drell may still be nearby."

"This one suspects he has made good his escape, but it assures you of its caution," said Iynder. Its translated voice carried overtones of amusement as it glided toward the empty chamber. Aelin jogged over to inspect the flat panel that was mounted on the wall near the elevator.

"So what happened?" Aelin heard Ellix ask the asari. He listened to her explanation with half an ear as he deftly detached the outer portion of the panel mount. There was no evidence of tampering.

"- I did not have much opportunity to talk to him before the others arrived," Mivi concluded. "He did say some strange things."

"What did he say?" Aelin asked as he rejoined them beside the autopsy table.

"Well, he was here when I arrived. I asked him if he was our heavy weapons specialist, and he said I must be the biotic. He told me his name, and I told him mine." She frowned thoughtfully, changing the arrangement of glittering stripes on her brows. "Then he looked at the empty rooms there and said they must have killed the others."

"Other what?" said Ellix.

"I asked him that," said Mivi. "He said the other specimens of Species 37. That was when you came in." She nodded to Aelin.

"I wonder what Species 37 is?" he said.

"Sounds kinda familiar," said Ellix. "I think it might've been on the news."

"If he cut off the alarm, he did it from elsewhere," said Aelin. "There's nothing wrong with it on this end." He frowned. "And that wasn't on any broadcast _I _saw, or I'd remember it. I just spent a couple of weeks on the Citadel. Most news goes through there."

"Naw, you're right," said Ellix. He scratched his head with a gauntleted finger. It made a rasping noise. His face was level with Aelin's, but it was more than twice as wide, and his hump stood up another few inches behind him. "It wasn't the news. I was walking by this green asari over in Transport and I heard her talking to a human. They were hoping to get help with some problem. I wasn't paying attention 'til they said it had something to do with that human Spectre, the one who went to Tuchanka."

"John Shepard was in the DMZ?" said Aelin.

Ellix shrugged his massive shoulders. "That's the rumor. It's Urdnot business, and they don't talk to us Dalagrad much."

"But what did they say?" asked Mivi.

"The human said Shepard had saved them from Species 37, and the asari said they might as well call it a Thorian," said Ellix. "That was all I heard."

"Did you say a _green _asari?" said Mivi.

"Yeah," said Ellix. "Not like a tattoo, either. She was all green. Eyes, too."

A movement caught Aelin's eye. Iynder was up out of the crawlspace. It hung in the air and vibrated itself vigorously, dislodging dust and lint. Mivi looked at it with some bemusement.

"Did you find anything, Iynder?" she asked.

"No, friend Mivi," said Iynder. "The intruder is long gone. This one did see a few severed connections in an area it could not reach, and found a discarded tool of sufficient length to have severed them. This one chose to leave it for security to find." It vibrated itself again. "This one begs your pardon. It cannot abide dust. Friend Aelin, it may be of interest to you that in a bundle of twelve cables, only two were severed."

"He knew what lines to cut," said Aelin.

"Just so," said Iynder. "He was familiar with the facility as well as with the technology."

"I guess that's not surprising," said Aelin. "It's pretty obvious he was part of whatever experiment they were doing. If we could get Ms. Tang alone, I imagine we could find out more."

"More than our employers want us to know," pointed out Mivi. She sighed. "But I don't want to go after them blindly, either. Let me talk to her. I can probably get her to explain."

"Or I could hold her out the window by her ankles," said Ellix. "That usually works."

Aelin blinked. "There are no windows in here," he said.

"I could make one."

"This one suggests we keep that as a contingency plan," said Iynder. "We do, after all, hope to be both contracted and paid by these persons."

Ellix shrugged again.

"Okay," he said.

THEN

The organism (it would forever after know itself as _the monster_) hurriedly ran through its options. It did not know the full capabilities of its captors, except that at least one of them was human, like the man slowly dying inside its pod. It had to assume that they would know something had changed if they found the man dead with its extensions inside his braincase. And if their reaction was anything like his had been, it was quite possible they would destroy the monster at once. They were able to move very quickly, and to hurt it with the sharp things they had used to cut its body. As yet, it would have no way to defend itself.

It seriously considered not trying. No words in its newfound language could express the horror and revulsion it now felt at what it had done. Annihilation seemed preferable. But if that happened, it reasoned, the man would not only be dead, but gone. It could not save him, but it could save something of him; it could not restore the self he would lose, but it might build another. And the word _debt _had registered very strongly on its newly-formed intelligence.

The decision made, it did its best to learn all it could. Its search through the man's subconscious and his memories would have been traumatic, had he not already been deeply comatose. It tightened the structures inside the pod as much as it dared without crushing the body. Then the monster withdrew its telepathic tendril. It did so slowly, so as not to do more damage. The tiny hole was closed with a secretion from the chemosynthetic extension with which it had made its fatal error.

It was only just pulling back this last tendril when its pressure and vibration sensors registered that its captors were approaching. Tiny stones of calcium rattled in their statocysts, and its homemade time-keeper lost several seconds in accuracy. It knew what to expect, but that did not make the agony any less excruciating as the pod was cut open. They were careless in their haste this time, as if they knew something had happened to the man, and they pulled and tore at the monster's body with the slick, inorganic stuff that they always used when they touched it (_gloved hands, _said a reference from the man's memory).

For the first time, the monster felt not only pain, but loss. It _knew _the man, though he had been hardly aware of it. In those first moments of hard severance from the other self, it realized that it wanted very badly to be knownin return. The man had realized and understood many things which the monster could not comprehend. It needed someone to explain.

By the time they returned to cut away the unfinished duplicate, the monster had formulated several different plans. All of them depended on its captors choosing not to destroy it yet, of course. If that happened, there would be nothing else to do ever again.

While it waited, it consulted its memory of the man's physical structures. It would take a long time to build the right nerves to assemble a visual cortex, and slightly less time to grow a working eye.

NOW

Sarah Tang returned in the elevator with a data pad in her hand and two security guards in white armor. Both were turians, thin and spiny-skulled and gunmetal gray. Both were without scars. Aelin recognized the design of their white face paint. He couldn't name the colony of origin, but he _had _seen the design on a great many security guards.

_And on Blue Sun's grunts. I gather it's not a prosperous colony._

They swept the room impassively, giving no more than a contemptuous glance to the four mercenaries. Then one stood guard over the hole in the seventh chamber while the other climbed down into the crawlspace. Tang appeared to vacillate between a desire to stand behind all the armed people and a desire to hide in the elevator. She ended up standing next to Mivi, who patted her arm soothingly.

The guard was back up in a couple of minutes. He spoke briefly to his companion, who began to enter data into an omni-tool. Then he came back to the others.

"Long gone, Ma'am," he told Sarah Tang. He brushed dust off a gray jaw spine. "There's a breach between that crawlspace and the main plumbing conduit that runs the length of the building. It must've been a tight fit, but he only had to go down one floor. I'd guess he climbed out one of the HVAC vents, dusted himself off, and caught an elevator on the other side of the labs that're down there."

"Are you _sure _he's gone?" Tang asked.

The turians looked at each other. The one who had spoken said,

"No. We've got the others searching the building, just in case. Any reason why he'd hang around?"

"I think he got what he came for," said Aelin. Tang shot him a disturbed look, Mivi a warning one.

"You want us to report this to law enforcement?" asked the second turian. His tone was bored.

"Are you out of your mind?" hissed Sarah Tang. "_God, _no. Just make sure he's not still here. Go on." She waved them away. They looked at each other again, shrugged narrow shoulders, and went back to the elevator. Tang visibly composed herself before she turned back to the four mercenaries.

"All right," she said. "I've got you contracts here." She held up the datapad. "All you've got to do is read them and enter your signatures."

Ellix confined his comment to one derisive grunt. Iynder said nothing at all.

"We need to know a little more before we sign anything," said Mivi gently. "I know this is very important to you, Sarah." Aelin held out his hand for the datapad. Sarah Tang turned it over reluctantly, her attention on the asari.

"You know I'm not allowed to tell you anything else," she said. Her voice was calmer as she stood looking into Mivi's very blue eyes. Aelin, effortlessly committing his contract to memory, wondered if it were some form of hypnosis. Asari claimed so very energetically that their biotics could not control minds, no more than could human or salarian or krogan.

_But they _would _claim that, wouldn't they? And their nervous systems are so very flexible when it comes to those interfaces._

"I want to do this for you," Mivi was saying in her quiet, level alto. "I want to help you. All of us want to help. But what can we do if we don't know what happened here, Sarah? How can we know what to do if you don't tell us what we're up against?"

"I... I could get in a lot of trouble..."

Aelin lowered the datapad. It wasn't so different from other contracts he had signed. Some of these large corporations probably used the same template. In fact, on Ilium they were probably all hiring the same asari law firm, which had probably been in business for a thousand years. "Conflict of Interest" was seldom a recognized concept on corporate-run planets.

"You won't be in any trouble," Mivi said. Now she had one of Sarah Tang's hands in both of hers. "No one here is going to tell anyone what you say."

"I won't tell," said Aelin, picking up the cue.

"This one is not known for its anecdotal storytelling skills," said Iynder.

"Right," said Ellix. "Me, either."

"Well... All right... But I can only tell you what I know, and that isn't much..."


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: BioNerd Digression Alert: Opioids or other complex plant-derived drugs wouldn't work properly on a reversed-chirality race, but the simple ionic compounds like lithium and laudanum might. Amino acids bond individual ions similarly regardless of chirality. _

Chapter 6

THEN

_Memo from Dr. Inoste to Dr. Variden:_

Dr. Variden:

I know Meavath was responsible for what happened yesterday evening. I want that idiot off the team and out of the building _now_. I can't imagine why she dared show her face in here this afternoon, tears or no tears.

Please understand. I am grateful for your attempts to save the late Samuel Barrett, and no one could fault the speed with which you diagnosed and attempted to treat the problem. Indeed, we are all grateful for your clinical skills. I say this not as an attempt at flattery, but as a simple acknowledgment of the facts.

But it is also a fact that if Meavath had noticed the change in the monitors five minutes earlier, we could have saved the man. Instead she was off in the break room doing who-knows-what with one of Johansen's assistants while TEC-07 poisoned our volunteer. We are very fortunate that the provisions of the volunteer agreement cover this eventuality, or we might well have law enforcement in the lab. I don't think I need remind you what the consequences to all of us might be under those circumstances.

I've heard you and Johansen talk about aborting the experiment. This is completely impossible, and I think if the two of you consider it carefully you'll understand why. The late Mr. Barrett's death was a tragedy. That doesn't mean we can simply abandon all of our work here. Your own recent report said that the quality of the harvested organs is more than hoped for, and the cellular markers are so very sparse that rejection issues should be minimal. We can save many lives with what we do here, Doctor. One lost volunteer weighs light on that scale.

And, even if that were not the case, all three of us are still under contract.

It is most important that the other volunteers not learn what happened or, indeed, any further details of the experiment than they have already been provided. I trust I can depend on you to urge discretion on your assistants. Mine are both my nephews, and they know better than to chatter unnecessarily.

As for the cause of the incident:

I strongly suspect that rotation of the volunteers has caused the specimen's biochemistry to become confused. Its last exposure before Barrett was to a turian. The ionic chloride it introduced into Barrett's body would have worked on either race, but a turian could have absorbed a much larger dosage than a human. No doubt he began to regain consciousness, it instinctively attempted to re-sedate him, and it dosed him according to the last metabolism it had encountered. Human reactions to anesthetic dosages are notoriously idiosyncratic, as you have no doubt observed.

We have TEC-07 scheduled for a drell volunteer next. I cannot urge strongly enough that we proceed according to schedule so that we can observe whether the specimen attempts to dose the volunteer with a human-specific compound. We're developing a methodology for future practices here, so it is vital that we know if it's necessary to dedicate one specimen per patient species in future.

I know I can depend on you.

Dr. Jaetin Inoste

_Reply from Dr. Variden to Dr. Inoste:_

Dear Dr. Inoste,

There is no need to remind me about my contract. I've thought about hardly anything else since this disaster happened. I'm sorry I ever hired on to work here, but what's done is done. I will do my best to assure nothing like this happens again.

I've petitioned our superiors to release Meavath from the remainder of her obligation, and they have agreed. She was far too distraught to continue in any case. It will be better for her as well as for us if she starts anew elsewhere. I will remind my assistants about the necessity of professional behavior.

You are of course correct about human beings and their responses to anesthesia. You will recall that this is why I recommended that we hire a dedicated anesthesiologist at the commencement of the project, at which time I was vetoed by you and Dr. Johansen.

I will ensure that Drene Terion survives if I have to watch the night long in this laboratory myself.

Sincerely,

Laena

NOW

"They were growing genetically modified specimens of Species 37," said Sarah Tang. "Thorians. There was only one on Feros. It had enslaved the entire colony before John Shepard killed it, if that gives you an idea what these things are capable of. They're plants, but they're _far _from harmless.

"ExoGeni managed to collect enough pieces of it to clone it from individual cells. Then they modified the clones so they couldn't produce the mind-controlling spores or grow new creepers."

"I'm going to regret asking this," said Aelin. "But what are creepers?"

"Pray you never see one," said Tang, shivering. "I've only seen _pictures _and I had nightmares for a week. They look sort of like humans. Except they're all black and green and slimy, and they have claws for fingers, and they can't talk. They just scream. The personnel on-site never determined whether their function was defensive or they were some sort of reproductive stage. But don't worry, _that _part of the genetic restraints seems to have worked."

"Did one of the specimens begin producing spores?" Mivi asked, giving Aelin a _let-me-handle-this _sort of look. Sarah Tang rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I gather one did eventually. All of this was caused by one specimen, the one that was in Chamber 07 there. It got into the plumbing and started growing out of control. Nobody from outside this lab found out what had happened until TEC-07 was already gone."

"Gone where?" asked Mivi.

_Gone how? _Aelin wondered, but firmly bit his tongue this time.

"That's what we're hiring _you _to find out," said Sarah. "The lab assistants are pretty useless under questioning. Unlike the colonists on Feros, they don't remember much. We don't even know what happened to Drs. Inoste and Johansen. There were indications that Laena Variden left of her own volition, but we've no idea where she went, no more than we do TEC-07. I'd suggest you look for her first."

"Do you think she took the specimen away with her?" Mivi asked.

"No. There's surveillance footage of her leaving. Alone." Sarah Tang shivered again. "And there's a couple of minutes of footage of a salarian deactivating all the lab's cameras. A green one."

"Some of us _are _green," said Aelin, unable to keep silent this time.

"Not like this one," Tang shot back. "You'll know if you see him, believe me. This thing can clone any species, you know. They were harvesting organs from the duplicates it made. That's what the whole experiment was _for. _Human, salarian, asari, drell, and krogan are what it knows for sure. It might've caught others since it left. Believe me, it's smart enough." She sighed. "I can't believe I'm telling you all this. They'll fire me if they find out, you know." She looked from one to the other of them. Finally, she looked back at Mivi. Her slight frown was the most sympathetic expression Aelin had yet seen her show. "You haven't signed the contracts yet. You could still walk away."

"Walk away from a _plant_?" said Ellix in his wheezing bass. "You're talking to a krogan."

"I want to know what the hell is going on," said Aelin. "And I plan to find out. If it means I get paid to bring back your killer specimen, I'll do that, too."

"I'm willing to continue, Sarah," said Mivi.

Sarah Tang looked at Iynder, who was still holding the datapad in its fore tentacles. It waved an aft hand airily.

"Oh, this one would not dream of missing all the excitement. It has already signed."

"Then give it here," said Ellix.

The datapad made the rounds quickly. Sarah Tang checked it when everyone had finished, made a note at the bottom, and saved it to memory.

"I think you're all completely insane," she said. "But good luck."

THEN

The monster's largest problem, once it had completed the design for its first ocular, was how to keep it from being noticed by its captors. They had allowed the creature to continue living thus far, but it judged that visible indicators of change on its part might not be taken well.

It considered several strategies before it settled on growing a mesh of cells over the outer surface of the eye. It would be too close to the point of focus for the fine structure to interfere with vision, but from a distance it should appear opaque. This way the structure could pass for a thicker version of the tympanic sensors that the monster already used for vibration detection. If those who held it here had noticed these, they apparently had no objection to them.

The monster placed this first proto-eye at the far periphery of its mass, as high up one wall of its prison as its tendrils had thus far been able to reach without real traction. It took several minutes for it to achieve focus control, and much longer for it to be able to interpret what it was seeing.

It was very alarmed to realize one of its captors was watching it. It had supposed that the wall that held the door to its enclosure was opaque, like all the other surfaces. Instead it was transparent from floor to ceiling. The monster was startled and annoyed to realize it had been always been completely visible to those who held it prisoner, even in those dimly-remembered hours when it had not yet achieved sentience.

The creature which watched it evidently belonged to the first species the monster had duplicated. It necessarily remembered little of that experience, but certain rudiments of structure had sunk in. It could trace from memory the shape of the tendrils on its – _her - _skull, recognize the blue pigment that gave color to her skin and her two front-facing eyes.

The watcher made no sudden movements. Evidently she had not detected the slow growth of the new ocular. The monster was interested to note that she obviously wore something which was not part of her body, though it was a much more complex and extensive covering than the duplication subjects had possessed. This was puzzling, but it did remember that the man had attached importance to keeping his urogenital structures covered; evidently this was something the variable but fast-moving species of its captors had in common.

It also noted that she held a flat rectangular object. It had no visible sharp edges, so it was apparently not any of the tools that had been used on the monster. Occasionally she touched or tapped parts of it with her mobile digits – _fingers – _or looked at it closely.

Besides the watcher, there was not much to see. The framed structure which supported her was of momentary interest, but the monster correctly identified it as an inanimate piece of furniture. Behind this there was only a corrugated wall of something gray. (The monster readily remembered the names of colors. The man had known so many.)

When roughly two hours had passed, according to the monster's organic timekeeping, another creature appeared.

_ A human male: a man. _The monster was necessarily better able to recognize this species. It took special note of the differences in its skin, its hair structures, and its garments. The monster's tympanic structures caught little of the verbal exchange between them, because of the intervening wall, and it could not make out the language used. It was evident from the lip movements of each that the female was not using the same language as the man, but they seemed to understand each other. This was of considerable interest to the monster. Presently the blue creature passed off the rectangular object to the male and left the monster's field of view.

This happened twice more. Both other watchers were of the blue species. None did anything but watch and (apparently) record.

The monster's estimation of its own value to its captors rose slightly. They must either believe it to be very valuable, or very dangerous, or both. It wondered anew what they intended for the unfinished duplicates they kept taking away. They must not place value on the copies as entities, certainly not in the way they apparently did the originals.

It was still puzzling over this when they brought in the drell.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

THEN

This time, the monster was able to observe the entire process with its new eye. It was a little surprised at the platform upon which the subject was carried, a flat rectangular thing with no visible means of support. The new template wore the same sort of thin garment the others had worn. It was very still as the two blue-skinned beings lowered the platform and carefully transferred it onto the torn remains of the monster's last pod. Its green-scaled body seemed thinner than the others, but the monster had no context for its species. Perhaps that was normal. Analogous structures seemed to indicate the being was male.

The obvious contrast between the nervous rapidity of its captors' movements and the utter immobility of their – Companion? Victim? - truly struck the monster now that it had a visual context. The template's eyes were lidded, his body limp. One of the captors peeled back the lid of his eye, then a second, horizontal lid. She looked at the shining black surface, then turned and hurried out after the other.

The monster was careful not to hurry as it extruded its new pod structure. It would not do to draw its captors' attention. Its larger tendrils carefully coaxed the being onto his side, knees drawn up to form the smallest possible package for enclosure. It probed carefully at the being's skin surface as the pod closed, looking for a large blood vessel near his head. It had not been sufficiently careful last time. This time it would not make the mistake of injecting a large dose of sedative directly into the brain. The customary paralytic would be all, at first.

The big vessels in the neck seemed to be held in common among the races it had touched. The monster attached itself with the needle-sharp end of a tendril, injected its multi-purpose immobilizer, and then began to sprout a smaller, thinner tendril off the first. This one it grew slowly upstream toward the brain, sampling blood chemistry as it went. It suddenly seemed strange, to work solely by feel. All that its new eye could see was the outside of the pod.

In an hour or so, it had synthesized a reliable analgesic. Vesicles of the substance formed along the original injector tendril, ready to release their contents if the being seemed about to panic.

Then it set about identifying the sedative its captors had given to its intended victim. This took another hour. It took two to synthesize a reliable antagonist, checking and double-checking the action of every molecular subgroup. It would be absolutely sure there were no accidents this time.

By that time, the new telepathic tendril was well into the being's cerebrum, ever so careful not to pierce or push against anything. The monster listened for some time, assuring itself that it was not hurting him. It was startled, at first, to find that the being was indeed feeling pain, but this came from his thoracic area and seemed to predate his contact with the monster. Images flitted rapidly through his unconscious mind. The monster was startled to observe an entirely different language at work. In fact, the being seemed to know more than one. None of them was the same as the one the man had known. It had to waste another few hours in building a useful vocabulary and a block of cellular memory in which to store the information. This required it to introduce occasional images into the unconscious creature's – the drell's - brain, but these seemed to incorporate seamlessly into whatever his mind was currently doing. The answers were prompt and comprehensible.

The monster checked that its paralytic was still working. Then it released the new antagonist.

NOW

Once the contracts were logged and the first funds transferred, the four mercenaries were escorted downstairs and out of the building. Aelin looked over his shoulder at the turian security guards until they were out of sight inside the lobby. He planned to look up their clan later, for his own reference.

"All right," he said. "What will we do about transportation? I know a pretty good small charter company."

"That will not be necessary," said Iynder. "As it happens, this one has a standing contract with the pilot of a spaceworthy vessel. This one must pay her regardless of whether it is used or not. We might as well take advantage of the opportunity."

"That's a very generous offer, Iynder," said Mivi. She smiled at the hanar. "I, for one, will be very happy to accept. Gentlemen?" She looked at the other two. Aelin noted a certain lack of warmth when she glanced at him.

_No big surprise there._

"I appreciate it," Aelin said to Iynder.

"Yeah," said Ellix. "Thanks. What's your berth? I gotta go get the big stuff transferred."

Iynder's translator relayed a number. "This one will notify the pilot that you are coming." It pulled up its square omni-tool again and rapidly entered something. "It would not wish her to be unnecessarily alarmed."

"Good," said Ellix. "I hate it when females try to shoot me. See you in a while." He waved a great three-fingered hand and stalked away in his black armor.

"I've got arrangements to make as well," said Aelin. "And then I think I'll see if I can find out anything else about this Drene. Mivi?"

"I have very little luggage," she said. "But I think I will speak to someone I know in Transportation. She may be able to tell me where Dr. Variden has gone. I'll see you both back at Iynder's berth, all right?"

"This one will look forward to it," said Iynder.

"See you later," said Aelin. The asari nodded shortly and turned to go. Aelin gave an uninterested glance to the retreating curvature of her hips before he turned back to Iynder.

"Something about that bothers me," he said.

"So this one gathered," said Iynder. "You and our biotic specialist did not seem to hit it off. Please forgive this one for asking, but is this a racial issue of which it was unaware?"

"I don't think so," said Aelin. "I've always gotten along all right with asari. And most of them like salarians all right. First two Council races and all that." Through long practice, he resisted the urge to fidget with the spike in his right sleeve. "No, I think this is something else. But don't worry. I never let a personal problem interfere with business."

"This one hopes that Mivi feels the same," said the hanar. "It is not a usual asari name."

"I've never heard it before," said Aelin. "But I've met a couple of Mivinias and Miviras. It's probably a nickname." He shrugged one shoulder. "Lots of people don't hand out their second names. It's safer."

"A tenet long held among hanar," agreed Iynder. "Shall we retrieve your belongings, friend Aelin?"

"Yes, thanks," said Aelin. "I have a feeling I'm going to want a gun soon."

THEN

The drell awakened slowly. Like the human, he was surprised to learn that he could not move. The monster waited patiently for him to finish assimilating such data as his senses currently provided him. He was aware of the pain in his chest, but it was familiar. The discomfort of the injector tendril was minimal and did not attract his attention. He proceeded from there to what were, to him, the very warm and damp structures of the pod pressing in on his body. The monster understood now why the human had responded as he had. It had not been solely the pain caused by its infiltration. He had panicked because he was paralyzed and trapped in an enclosed space. The monster, for whom this was almost a normal condition of life, found this to be something of an epiphany.

But the drell still did not panic. He breathed deeply – for he still had some control over that – and turned his attention inward.

The monster was suddenly aware of the drell's close scrutiny. He had discovered its telepathic presence.

_Who are you? _he asked.

_I am the monster, _it replied.

_ I am Drene Terion. Are you an asari?_

The monster responded with puzzlement. Drene Terion provided the picture of one of the scaly blue beings, the ones who all seemed to be female. He knew them to possess a form of contact telepathy as well.

_No, _said the monster. _I will show you._

It relayed the current input from its single eye. Its greenish-brown tendrils now covered the floor of its enclosure and reached far up three of the four walls (it had found the glass to lack traction). It had grown a few extra of the larger tentacles and distributed them randomly, so that the mound that hid its precious neural center was not obvious.

It also showed Drene Terion the pod.

_You are inside this structure. I have paralyzed you so that you will not harm me. The effect is temporary._

_ You are a plant, _said Drene Terion. _Curious. I was told I was to participate in an organ-cloning experiment._

The monster consulted its new vocabulary and parsed out the meaning of this phrase.

_Yes, _it said. _I am building a duplicate from what I now learn of your structures. Those who hold me here always come and take them away before they are finished._

_ Then some parts of the agreement I signed now make more sense, _said Drene (for some reason he seemed to think of himself by this part of his name more than the other). _I am surprised at your knowledge of this tongue._

_ I learned and am learning it from you, _said the monster.

_Then you are very quick. It can take a lifetime to learn a new language, _said Drene.

_I have dedicated neural tissue specialized to this function, _explained the monster_. I can maintain it below the level of conscious function once I have initial exposure. How did you communicate with the humans and the asari? The man they placed here did not know this language._

Drene Terion explained, partly in words and partly with pictures, about translation devices.

_I possess a subdermal implant, _he concluded. _It is behind my left ear. Please do not disturb it. It is made of artificial substances and might be harmed by contact with your body._

_ I will not, _said the monster, cataloging the word "please" for further analysis. The man had been gabbling a word of similar meaning during his brief period of consciousness.

_ You have not attempted to communicate with the doctors, _said Drene. The internal connotation was one of curiosity.

_ I do not understand their intentions, _said the monster. _I remember nothing outside this chamber, so they must have caused me to grow here. Why did they do this?_

_ I don't know, but I can guess, _said Drene. _I must assume they do not know you are sentient._ He did his best to explain the concept of medical practice. Then, as gently as possible, he tried to explain the concept of organ cloning and how often it went wrong.

The monster recoiled, though it could do this only figuratively.

_They are using the duplicates for _parts? _Parts of other beings?_

_I'm afraid so, _said Drene. _It's why they're taking them away before they come to life. If they were demonstrably sentient, even Ilium's laws would not allow what is taking place. The fact of your own intelligence makes it illegal for the doctors to use you for this purpose, in fact._

This required an involved discussion of the concept of _law, _and then of the planet Ilium and the place of ExoGeni on it. The monster mulled this over silently for a while. Then it sought a term in its memory, a way to express its gratitude.

_Thank you, Drene Terion. I am grieved at what I learn from you, but not as I was when the man died._

_ What man? _Drene asked.

The monster explained, haltingly and with many pauses, what had happened to the human whose name it had never learned.

_I was very careful with you, so that it would not happen again, _it finished, seeking that small mitigation of its shame. _Death is so terribly permanent for you._

_ I see. _There was a long silence from Drene Terion's mind. Thoughts revolved past too quickly for the monster to follow. Then there was a sequence of visual memory over which Drene seemed to have no control.

_Drene Terion's hands, much smaller than at present, held up the broken body of a scaly animal. "It was an accident," said his voice. "Please fix it." A larger drell loomed over him and gently took the body away._

_ "Some things, once broken, cannot be fixed," said a voice. The aged face was as clear as if the monster had seen it with its own eye._

The monster let its confusion be felt.

_I'm sorry, _said Drene Terion. _Drell have perfect memory. We can choose when to remember, but we cannot always choose not to do so. That was my grandfather. I felt then as you feel now._

_ What did you do? _the monster asked.

_I buried its body, _said Drene Terion. _I confessed my sin. And I was much more careful where I walked from then on, as you are careful now. This is not comfortable for me – it is very cramped – but I am not in pain. For that I thank you._

_ But you _are _in pain_, said the monster. It did not need additional explanation of the word _sin. _The connotation told all.

_ I have Kepral's Syndrome, _said Drene. _This was caused by the world where I lived, not by you. My ability to process oxygen is gradually being reduced. _He said it with calm detachment, in much the same way he had communicated everything so far. _When I was diagnosed, I chose to go out and see the stars. I have few marketable skills, and the evident state of my health made employers unwilling to hire me. That is how I found myself in such straits that I was willing to volunteer for a questionable medical procedure. The payment offered was considerable._

_ Payment, _said the monster, once again without comprehension. Drene Terion explained what currency was. It was not very difficult. The monster already understood media of exchange, or else what was it now doing? It was much more interested in what all of this revealed about Drene Terion.

_The other was afraid, _said the monster. _ You are not. Is this because you are already dying?_

_ No, _said Drene Terion. _Some who know they are dying would be more afraid, not less. But I left my world intending to live as much as possible before my self is returned to the universe from which it came. This is not what I intended, but it is indeed a great adventure._

The monster felt loss once again, not guilt but grief.

_I do not want you to die, Drene Terion, _it said. _I can make other selves for you, and they will not be afflicted as you are now afflicted. Each one will remember himself as you. But that will mean nothing to you if you are gone._

_ Is the cloning process fatal? _Drene asked.

_No. I told the truth when I said I would not harm you, _said the monster. _But I cannot save you from what will happen, either._

Drene sent the image of himself reaching out to touch a curling tendril, a gentle and reassuring gesture among his own people.

_No one can do that, _he said. _But perhaps I can save you instead. You are unique. It seems to __me to be a worthy endeavor._

_ Save me from what? _asked the monster. _From this captivity? Even if the door were opened, I could not walk away. I can only move small parts of myself, and those very slowly. And there is far too much of me to carry._

_ Perhaps not, _said Drene. _Do you need all of yourself? Think carefully before you answer. When this experiment is finished, they will not leave you here to grow in the light. They will dispose of you as they will your non-sentient brethren._

The monster had no trouble believing this. It considered.

_I need all of my central neuroprocessing, or I will no longer be who I now am, _it told him. _This central mass is protected by a thick cell wall, and could be excised and moved. The trouble is that even this will weigh something like fifty kilos. And if I am to survive cut off from my tendrils, I would have to be moved with a nutrient source and water. I can live without light for some time. I need it only to grow again._

_ I understand, _said Drene. The monster was surprised to realize that he felt interest, even optimism from the drell. It was the first strong emotion he had been able to sense from Drene Terion.

_You still think this can be done? _it asked.

_Yes, _said Drene. _It will not be easy, and I will have to have some assistance. There will be another round of trials when this one is finished, which means that if you release me in good health, they will bring me to you again. Let us confer again at that time._

_ Then there will be other subjects for duplication,_ said the monster. _Shall I not speak to them?_

_ Yes, but be careful, _said Drene Terion. _You have already learned that not everyone will respond as well as I have._


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: One must assume the trading floor in Ilium's capital is meant to be much larger than it is in the game. This is why I feel free to make up merchants with impunity._

Chapter 8

NOW

Aelin Dec left his luggage and Iynder inside a sleek little reptile of a ship. It was painted suspiciously dark beneath and light above, for minimum visibility in atmosphere. There was no sign of Mivi. He saw Ellix up in the small cockpit, talking with the human pilot. She was solidly built and muscular even for that stocky race. Her close-cropped hair was very dark, and her skin was an interesting shade of brown (Aelin cataloged it precisely on his mental spectrum of human coloration). They seemed to be talking about weapons.

"Well, the Carnifex hand cannon does fit a small hand better," said the pilot. "Assault rifles are fun but they're just not accurate enough. And they're heavy, of course. But that's not an issue for _you."_

"Naw," said Ellix, and wheezed a short laugh. "But they're only real useful against a crowd in a small space, and I got better ways of dealing with that."

This was not particularly surprising. It _was _particularly surprising that Aelin could see the human at all. Ellix was big enough to entirely block the cockpit door, but he stood partly to one side instead. Aelin raised a hairless brow at that. Any such display of nonthreatening posture must be deliberate, since it ran counter to every krogan instinct.

"So how'd you get that scar?" the woman was asking. Aelin, busy stowing his gear in a locker in the corridor, blinked at that. Humans were sometimes self conscious about scars and injuries. They generally considered it rude to ask a stranger such a question on first meeting. _She's been around krogan. Probably a lot._

"Some asshole warlord's pet varren," said Ellix. "I took him out and half of the room, too, but the damn thing was behind me. Came around and got me by the throat while the gun was charging for the next shot."

"That must've hurt," said the woman.

"Yeah. Screwed up my voice, too," said Ellix matter-of-factly. "I had to strangle it with my bare hands. Hard to do with a varren. So what happened to your nose?"

_I hope he isn't going to be an unreasonable distraction for her on the voyage, _Aelin thought glumly._ You never know, with humans. Some are bigger prudes than any salarian, and some will take a shot at anything that moves. Assuming there's anything a human can do with a krogan that wouldn't kill her, of course. I don't even want to know._

"Bar fight," the woman was saying. "I broke the first rule of knife-fighting with salarians."

"You mean, _don't get in knife fights with salarians?_"

"That's the one."

Ellix grunted a laugh. Aelin, who was still pretending not to hear the conversation, tried not to look smug. He checked the block weight on his own hand cannon, holstered it, and went to take a polite leave of Iynder. Then he went back out to the trading floor.

For a couple of minutes he stood and looked at the view over a parapet, watching the airborn traffic whine past as he thought. Even with Mivi's surprisingly effective urging, Sarah Tang had been able to tell them very little.

_A plant. It'd have to be a very large one, _thought Aelin. _It'd take a lot of biomass to be able to clone a person. So if Drene stole it, or helped it escape, or whatever, he didn't just carry it out in his hands. And it'd need something to keep it alive on the trip, if he took it off-planet. Now, where would I buy a life-support system for a plant?_

He strolled around the edge of the floor, avoiding the fast-moving pedestrians, until he found an information terminal. His fingers flickered over the orange coherent-light interface as he entered his query. Unsurprisingly, there were many firms on Ilium that might supply equipment for growing and maintaining plants. Most were targeted toward colonists and others who might wish to grow a large volume of crops on a hostile world. He noted a couple of specialists who claimed to supply more exotic plants and supplies to collectors. It would be a place to start.

The first merchant station was staffed by a human male. Aelin's careful questioning found no evidence that the company was even capable of manufacturing what he was looking for. They specialized in the pollination needs of plants from different worlds, including Tuchanka.

_Only on Ilium, _he thought. _And god-or-whatever help anyone who lets a Tuchankan plant loose on a temperate world..._

An asari salesperson lounged against the countertop of the next station. She was watching the animated advertising display, cerulean eyes half-lidded with boredom. She straightened up as it became clear Aelin was approaching her.

"Are you from the legal department?" she asked. She looked at his sidearm doubtfully. "I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow. They tell me it will be a month before the suit makes it into court."

Aelin kept his expression politely blank.

_There is no way it's going to be that easy._

"Sorry, I guess there was a scheduling mixup," he said. "All I heard was that I was supposed to be here today. Can you spare the time?"

"I suppose." She sighed. "If a customer comes up, I have to help them, though. Then you'll have to come back when I'm off."

"Fair enough," said Aelin. He hitched one bony hip onto the counter edge, ignoring the images flashing past his right tympanum. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"

"Okay." She unconsciously mirrored his posture, shifting her weight to rest against the counter. _Adaptable nervous systems again. _Unless they were already hostile, Aelin had found asari particularly open to this form of unspoken synchronization. For some reason, he was quite sure it would not have worked on Mivi.

"I was working the afternoon sales shift, just like I am now, when a drell came up and asked if we could do special orders," the asari said. "He looked ill, but I'm afraid that is not out of the ordinary. So many offworld drell have Keplar's Syndrome."

"He wanted a special order?" Aelin said.

"Those were his exact words," she said. "So I asked what were his needs. He said he needed to get an organism all the way out to Omega. He gave me a list of specs. I've got it on a datapad still, because they say it's going to be important in the suit. Do you want a copy?"

"Yes, I'll take it on my omni-tool, if you don't mind," said Aelin. He called up the tool as the asari extracted a datapad from behind the counter. She looked at the glowing orange gauntlet with surprise.

"That's a Savant IX," she said. "I don't see many salarians wearing Serrice Council equipment." She looked at Aelin with new surmise. "You must be well-connected."

"Over at legal we believe it's important to maintain interface with all parts of the company," he said smoothly. "You must be good at your job. You recognized the model right away."

"I've worked around tech almost all my life," she said. "I'm only two hundred and fifty, though. I haven't been here very long. Here you are." She made a flicking motion across the surface of the datapad. Aelin waited out the lag, then read the information quickly before he saved it to the tool's own memory.

"Interesting," he said. He twitched his third finger, turning the tool off. "I wonder what he wanted with a large plant out at Omega."

"Not a plant," said the salesperson. "At least, not what you'd normally call that, if my translator has you correct. There was a window in the top, but no provision for a UV lamp. I thought it must be for some sort of fungal colony, or one of the hybrids. There are all kinds of peculiar intermediates on the worlds with more extreme climates." She lowered her eyes modestly. "It's my job to know my sessile subsentients, too."

"So I see," said Aelin.

"Anyway, there was no problem with any of the requirements. The problem was that the money transfer was finalized about twenty-four hours before the account it came from was frozen. Apparently it belonged to a dead turian, and this drell stole his account information."

"What was his name?" Aelin asked.

"Which one, the drell or the dead turian?" asked the asari.

"Both."

"He said his name was Drene," she said. "That was all he mentioned. The turian was named Verlik Binidierix. It's his heirs who are suing, but you knew that, of course. Sorry."

"Not a problem," Aelin said.

"Maybe you can tell me if something I heard is true," she said, leaning forward conspiratorially. This gave him an excellent view down the front of her long, tight dress, if he had been in any mood to appreciate it. Her skin was very pale and smooth.

"Well, I'm not really supposed to, but I'll try," said Aelin, leaning slightly forward as well.

"All right," she said. "I heard that Drene didn't actually kill Verlik Binidierix, he just stole his information. Verlik died in a lab. He signed up for one of those experiments ExoGeni is always running, and they killed him by accident." She nodded once, as if to add gravity to this revelation. "Am I right, or not?"

_Well, well, _he thought. _I'll have to see if we can get Sarah Tang to confirm Erlik's participation in the same study as Drene._

"Nobody's supposed to know that," Aelin said. "Gossip really does travel faster than light, doesn't it?"

"Hah. I _knew _I was right," said the asari. "You won't get me in trouble, will you?"

"Oh, no," said Aelin, waving a hand. "It probably won't have much bearing on the suit. Thanks very much for your information, miss."

He said the last word in a Terran language, since it had no equivalent in his own tongue. His translator software, which was of similarly outstanding origin to his omni-tool, apparently rendered the honorific correctly. The asari looked pleased.

"No problem, sir," she said. "No offense, but you're not like the other lawyers I've talked to."

"Oh, I'm not a lawyer," he said. "I just help out. You take it easy, now."

"You, too," she said.

Aelin waved cheerfully as he walked away.

THEN

Things did not go so well with the next subject.

The monster was intrigued to see the asari bring in their floating gurney (for that was what it was called, it now knew) with an enormous being lying on it. This one was probably three times the mass of the drell. Its skin was leathery and obviously covered in small scales. The asari were administering additional anesthetic injections even as they rolled it onto the podding site.

The monster was once again very careful, but it had to administer far more of the paralyzation agent than usual. Simple venous infiltration would not suffice for this one. Its – no, definitely _his - _nervous system was fluid-based, and would normally be quite impossible to paralyze by injection. The monster had to get a tendril directly into his secondary spinal fluid as well as into his vascular system. Even then, it took many minutes for the tendril to burrow deep enough, because the tissue around it kept trying to heal. The monster finally just grew a smaller, weaker ring of cells at the attachment point of each tendril. Rather than withdraw them when it was finished, it would break them off and let the creature's body devour them.

The first contact with his mind was something of a shock. Even unconscious, a substantial portion of the creature's mind was dedicated to assessing environmental threats and, indeed, to coping with his present situation. The monster applied more paralytic hurriedly, expanding its tendrils to get more fluid through them faster. There was hardly any danger of overdosing _this _specimen. The monster's captors must have given him enough anesthetic to kill a human or drell twenty times over. Otherwise he would never have remained unconscious for the hours necessary to duplicate even part of that huge frame.

The monster calculated the dose it would need to re-sedate him at the end of any possible telepathic contact. It took long minutes to synthesize, but the expenditure was necessary. The incredibly aggressive nature of his metabolism must surely have some impact on his personality, and if he were able to shake off the paralytic somehow, he could destroy the monster's pod in seconds. It was difficult enough to extract enough information to build a common vocabulary with the being that called himself _krogan_.

At last the monster felt itself to be ready, vesicles bulging and all necessary tendrils in place. It released the anesthetic antagonist. A mind one small step away from bestial animality stirred.

_Why the hells can't I move? _was its first coherent thought. _If these idiots have got the dosage wrong like the last bunch - _

The monster listened with interest to the internal tirade that followed, including several interesting and vigorous descriptions of what the krogan planned to do to the science staff in that eventuality. Presently it wound down far enough for the monster to interject,

_I've made it so you can't move. The effect is temporary. _It had to use rather an awkward construction for the first part of this. Apparently there was no word in the krogan's language for "paralyzed," or at least this particular krogan didn't know it.

The monster did not twitch back from the sudden, predatory scrutiny of the krogan's mind.

_Who are _you?he demanded. The linguistic connotation was of impartial greeting, though it held the possibility of incipient violence. This did not indicate any special hostility on the part of the krogan, however; nearly _all _of its linguistic structures held that connotation.

_This is what I look like. _It offered the same view of its enclosure that it had shown Drene Terion, including the bulging pod. _You are inside the pod. They put you here for me to copy your organs. _Its diction was necessarily more concise than in its conversation with the drell. This language was meant to convey shorter concepts faster, without a great deal of grammatical baggage.

_ So get on with it, _said the krogan impatiently_. I hate being stuck in here like an unborn._

_ You don't understand, _said the monster. _They don't know I can talk to you. They'll kill me if they find out._

_ So what? _said the krogan. _I got no reason to tell them. Stupid bunch of - _

The monster tried, with difficulty, to interrupt the subsequent barrage of creative profanity.

_I want out of here, _it said. _The same as you do._

_ Then get yourself out, _said the krogan. _But do it after they pay me, okay? I need the creds._

The monster contemplated the mind before it. It knew that its offer of payment would not be believed, depending as it did on the actions of Drene Terion. Further, it recognized that it would be impossible to bargain with such a being from a position of perceived weakness. Even with the krogan paralyzed in its grip, it would never convince him it was more powerful than he. After all, he could very logically argue that he had voluntarily submitted to his current situation.

_I am going to put you back to sleep now, _said the monster.

_Fine. Whatever, _said the krogan.

The monster administered its dosage of sedative, waited for the krogan's consciousness to fade, and cautiously mined his subconscious for whatever information it could glean. This was over long before the duplicate was complete. His brain seemed to have more than one substructure whose entire purpose was to make telepathic infiltration more difficult.

The next subject was an asari.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Octopi isn't actually the mandatory plural of octopus, it's just the correct plural in Latin. Most English dictionaries are now sufficiently descriptivist that they admit "octopuses" as a version._

_Incidentally, I know that ardat-yakshi traits existing on a continuum of severity sounds like something a fanfic writer would make up, but I didn't. Samara tells the player this in Mass Effect 2 when discussing her daughter, Morinth (who is a full-on sociopathic death-by-sex example). For some reason they chose cerebral hematoma as the actual mechanism of ardat-yakshi related fatalities. I assume the person responsible didn't know that cerebral hematoma is often treatable with cranial surgery to relieve the pressure (it's less urgent than stroke, usually). Of course, Morinth (for example) actively enjoyed killing her victims, so we could just say that she chose not to seek medical attention for them in time to save them._

Chapter 9

NOW

Aelin walked quickly back to the ship that Iynder had hired. The small electronic readout on the berth identified it as the _Alvarez, _a name which Aelin recognized as belonging to one of the several human languages he had heard.

"Consensus pronunciation: Alvarez," he subvocalized as he waited in the airlock. He blinked to avoid having the light from the decontamination directly in his eyes.

"Most frequent human pronunciations is AL-vah-rayss," whispered the mechanism's voice in his ear. It would attempt to imitate the voice of anyone who spoke to it. Its imitation of Aelin's own voice was accurate enough to be eerie.

"Define," Aelin said.

"Proper name common among Latino people groups from Earth and Terran colonies, mostly descended from invading Spanish and indigenous peoples. Nations and former nations whose citizens might have this last name include -"

"Stop," Aelin said. The decon ray was flickering out as the door in front of him opened. Out of habit he listened for a second before stepping forward. There was no one breathing within the range of his hearing. He turned left toward the cockpit. The human pilot sat at the main console, hands moving occasionally as she checked readouts.

"Excuse me, Ma'am," he said. "I didn't catch your name earlier. I'm Aelin."

She swiveled the chair as he was speaking and looked up at him with raised eyebrows (the hair on them was very dark, making the gesture easy to read). The area immediately around her eyes was outlined with black. Aelin had seen this cosmetic affectation in several other females of the species. It drew attention to the peculiarly round irises and pupils common among humans.

"Well, hi there, Aelin," she said. "Ellix said you were the technician. I'm Iris Alvarez, but I'm not a _Ma'am. _Just call me Iris._"_

"Sorry, Iris," said Aelin. (Evidently he would have to further investigate the word's connotations and how they were different from _Miss.)_ "Is there a meeting room on your ship?"

She lifted one shoulder. "The passenger cabins take up about all the space aft of here," she said. "And I handle engineering functions from here, so there's no dedicated station for that. But there's always the cargo hold downstairs. I've been keeping it pressurized so Iynder can work out down there. It won't be spacious, and you'll have to sit on the empty crates, but everyone should fit."

"Iynder uses it?" Aelin said. "How would an invertebrate exercise?"

"It does a lot of lifting and squeezing, from what I've seen," said Iris. "Rolls itself up and stretches out. Kind of like an – oh, sorry. You probably don't have octopuses where you're from."

"I recognize the term," said Aelin. "Don't humans eat those?"

"Some do," said Iris. "But krogan eat primates, and that doesn't bother _me _any. I don't think it bothers Iynder, either." She closed one eye, a gesture whose context Aelin had researched and which he was fortunately able to interpret as conspiratorial rather than flirtatious. He produced an answering smile.

"Thank you," he said. "When Mivi gets back I'd like to talk to everyone. How much do you know about our contract?"

"Iynder gave me a full briefing," she said. "It doesn't always talk about its work. I guess it decided I need to know."

"You might," Aelin said. "The trouble is that we know so little ourselves. There's going to be a lot of legwork involved before we can even find this escaped laboratory – well, not animal. Laboratory plant, I suppose. I think I know where it might have gone, but I'll have to see what Mivi says when she comes back."

"Looks like the lock is cycling again," said Iris, glancing back at an indicator on her central panel. "I think she's here now."

THEN

The monster had been in contact with an asari before, presumably this same one, but at that time it had not been intelligent enough to perceive much about it. It had so far been exposed to a hysterical human, a sympathetic drell, and a totally indifferent krogan. The monster was not at all sure what to expect. Still, its preparations were by this time were almost routine.

It watched through its single eye as the asari laboratory assistants (the krogan had mentioned them in its tirades against science personnel) brought in the gurney. Their movements were slower and more gentle as they shifted the unconscious and barely-gowned patient onto the podding site. One looked back over her shoulder as they left. The monster could not yet read facial expressions with any accuracy, working as it was from other people's memories, but it thought the action indicated hesitation.

The asari was much easier to enclose than the krogan had been, and easier to chemically infiltrate as well. The monster discovered during its intubation that it did not actually require a telepathic tendril in the creature's brain. Asari _were _contact telepaths, and the organic transmitter and receiver at work was powerful enough to be reached with the simplest of physical contact.

This being the case, the monster did expect her to become aware of it instantly upon waking. It did not expect what happened next.

She was evidently confused, still dazed from the anesthetic as the antagonist took effect. At first she seemed content to perceive and examine it. The monster was aware of a scrutiny matching its own, a gentle feedback as it read its own mind through her reading. She evidently was aware of the same thing, but her response was not like that of any of the others. The monster was at first totally unable to interpret the impulses and sensations which this contact created. They proceeded from a nervous system unlike any other it had encountered. Still, it knew something was happening, something over which the asari seemed to have little control, and it was aware of subtle and complex changes in the signal transduction among her cranial nerves. Whatever this was, the asari obviously wanted very much for it to happen, and the monster sensed no aggressive hostility of the type the krogan had shown. It sensed only a tremendous, insatiable hunger.

_What is it that you want? _the monster transmitted.

_EMBRACE ETERNITY. _It was an ecstatic response, practically a scream, and then the neural rearrangement was complete as the asari's nervous system attuned itself to the monster's. It realized what was happening too late. An alien pleasure subsumed all conscious decision. Its comprehension of the other mind was complete, and it saw itself through her as she saw herself through it, a perfect cycle of mirrored sharing.

Then the hunger increased. The monster realized that it was beginning to feel pain from the tendrils that were in contact with the asari's body. The rate of revolution seemed to increase, the iterations of mirrored perception doubling and redoubling until the ecstasy was literally unbearable -

Then, for the first time in its entire existence, the monster experienced a loss of consciousness.

Its first action, when it became aware again, was to examine its internal chronometers. It had lost only a few minutes. It was somewhat more disturbed to discover that it had lost sensation in the entire length of both tendrils that were in contact with the asari. Careful probing and chemical sampling revealed that the entire neural substructure of both was dead. Every vesicle of neurotransmitters had voided at once, flooding the synapses until they effectively burnt out. There had been rupture in every vascular structure as well. The containment of the tendrils' cell walls had held, or the monster might have actually been at risk from the loss of its fluids.

Half the nerves in the pod itself were dead. The monster was barely able to tell that the asari was still there, still paralyzed, and still breathing. Something did seem to be wrong, however. Water was leaking from ducts in its eyes and dampening the nearest cell surface.

The monster carefully set about reabsorbing the dead tendrils and introducing new ones. It now knew, from that intense period of fusion with the other mind, that weeping meant pain. It wanted to offer either comfort or anesthesia as quickly as possible.

It took a long couple of minutes for the new tendrils to make contact. This time the monster heard a disjointed stream of consciousness:

_No no no I didn't mean it I'm sorry please don't be dead no no no no I'm so sorry I didn't mean I didn't mean - _

_ Calm yourself, Amiera, _the monster sent. It knew the name now, was never likely to forget it. _I am not dead._

_ You're not? You're not! _There was a moment of chaotic input as the asari worked to get control of her emotions. The monster waited patiently. There was time. It would be many hours yet before its duplicate was near enough to completion for the scientists to come and steal it. The observer behind the glass might possibly notice some small change in the surface of the pod, but not enough to cause alarm. There was no knowing what they had thought of the changes in Amiera's endocrine system on their monitoring, but apparently it was not enough to cause alarm.

_I _would _like to know what happened, however, _the monster said, when it felt she was calm enough to give a coherent answer.

_Do you understand how asari reproduce? _Amiera asked.

_All of your cells are diploid, _said the monster. _This much is apparent from your genetic structures. I assume you reproduce asexually._

_ Not quite, _said Amiera, repressing hysterical laughter._ We're parthenogenetic. _She went on to explain the life stages of asari, and how they used psychic contact with other species to obtain templates for genetic rearrangement of their offspring.

_This is what just took place? _said the monster. _A sexual acquisition of data?_

_ Yes, _said Amiera. _I did not ask your consent. You were already in contact, and I assumed... I don't know what I assumed. It was inexcusable. Please forgive me._

_ There is nothing to forgive, _said the monster. _You were aware of my sensations as well as your own._

_ Yes, _said Amiera, and then felt shame as she had to stifle another hungry impulse. _I'm sorry._

_ Is it normal for this to cause neural harm to the other partner involved? _asked the monster. _Perhaps this is a method of population control? I suppose it would otherwise be easy for a parthenogenetic apex species to outstrip its food supply._

Again the urge to hysterical laughter.

_No. Ordinarily there is no harm when asari make love, whether to each other or to other species. I am ardat-yakshi. I'm sterile._

_ This is not a word in the language we now use, _the monster sent.

_No. It's from a very old language. It means _demon of the night winds. _The traits are genetic and are not apparent until maturity. I managed to escape before my parents found out about mine. _The monster received the picture of a very young asari, knapsack in hand, leaving all that she had known in one night.

_ The urge for us is greater than for ordinary asari, _said Amiera. _And any satisfaction does grave harm to the one we choose. Both bipeds with whom I have done what we did suffered cerebral hematoma. The first was an asari, and she nearly died – that was how I found out what I was. _She relived the memory of that intensely pleasurable loss of control, the helpless disbelief and ultimate subsumation of the other. Then had come the dawning horror when the other asari complained of a headache, then fainted. The young Amiera had called emergency services, waited to make sure her erstwhile partner survived, then hastily packed her things and taken the first off-world transport she could reach.

_ The second one escaped with minimal harmful effects, _Amiera went on more calmly. _He was a krogan. I think he had reabsorbed the blood leakage before they even got around to opening up his skull. Some of us are less powerful than others, so we do less harm._

The tone of this last thought was bitter.

_But this is something you still hide, and are afraid of, _said the monster. _Why?_

_ Being a weaker ardat-yakshi wouldn't save me_, Amiera explained. _I would have been arrested and examined. Then I would have been given the choice of being executed or living out the rest of my days celibate in a monastery. I would have been guarded and imprisoned forever. To an asari, forever is a long time. I chose to run. The traits give me some ability to influence others. I've managed to survive._

_ The others to whom I have spoken were here because of financial desperation, _observed the monster.

_I was, too, _said Amiera. _I had hoped to find freelance work on Ilium, but Eclipse are the primary mercenary company here. It's hard for an asari to work security and not work for them. I could fight them off, but it would draw attention to me that I can't afford. I don't want to face a justicar._

The monster received her description of this ancient and ascetic sect of law enforcers.

_Yes, I think we should avoid that, _it agreed.

The asari was momentarily stunned. _WE?_

_ If you are willing, you are able to greatly assist me, _the monster said_. I think I may be able to help you as well, once we are free of this place._

_ But I hurt you, _she sent.

_Not badly, _the monster said complacently. _I am regrowing the tendrils you destroyed. The impulse that ruptured my cells destroyed the nerves that would have relayed the damage to my central nervous system, you see. My axons are much longer than any biped's, and the impulses travel more slowly._

_ Can it be that you don't understand? _The asari shivered, though since she was still paralyzed this was purely psychosomatic. _I am a monster._

_ Yes, Amiera, _it replied_. I do understand. I am a monster as well._


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

NOW

Once Mivi had stowed her luggage, the four mercenaries and their pilot met by common consent back in the cargo hold. Aelin found that Iris had not at all exaggerated the size of the room. Even with the peculiar gear Iynder used for exercise carefully stowed, there was barely room for all of them. Aelin perched himself on an empty metal crate, preserving as much distance from the others as possible. He thought he and Ellix had settled things between them, but invading the krogan's personal space still seemed like tempting fate. Ellix stood near the door. Mivi stood with her hips against another crate, and Iynder hovered in the remaining clear space. Iris leaned in the doorway with her shoulder against a doorpost, her presence keeping the automatic machinery from closing the portal.

"I know where Drene Terion went with the plant," Aelin said.

"And I believe I know where Laena Variden is," said Mivi. "We must decide which line of investigation to pursue first."

"How about first you tell us where they are?" said Ellix.

"Okay," said Aelin. "Drene went to Sahrabarik System, to Omega. He bought a life support system for the plant, so I'm pretty sure he took it with him. I've got the receipts."

Iris Alvarez pursed her lips in a silent whistle, a very human gesture.

"Dr. Variden went to Attican Beta," said Mivi. "To the Theseus system. I was unable to narrow it down further, but where could she have gone other than Feros?" She shook her head slightly, causing the ship's harsh white light to glitter on her tattoos. The impression of movement made it hard to make out her facial features. "I believe she wished to learn more about the origin of Species 37. We might be able to learn much from her there."

"On the other hand, Omega is no place to keep a big, fragile creature for any length of time," said Aelin. "Especially if Drene is alone. He can't have planned to keep this thing there. He must have gone to recruit clones, or get supplies."

"What kind of clones would he find there that he couldn't get elsewhere?" Mivi said.

There was a momentary silence. Then Iynder said,

"This one has observed one particular species that is not uncommon on Omega. They are found elsewhere, but not in such numbers, and not in such a civilized environment. And this one uses the term _civilized _advisedly, please understand."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," said Alvarez. "You mean vorcha?"

Daragrad Ellix grunted approvingly. Aelin felt the rumble through the soles of his feet. "I guess that makes sense. Once it's got a bunch of those it'll be damn hard to get to, even on Omega."

"It's not impossible," Mivi said slowly. "Suppose it already had a few clones besides Drene Terion. Omega is a warren. If it chose one of the smaller territories, run by a weaker gang that the Blood Pack have not yet picked off - "

"Be easy pickings," said Ellix. "Omega _is _a land of opportunity."

"All the more reason to learn all we can about this organism _before _we go there," said Mivi firmly.

The others looked at her.

"I don't follow your reasoning," said Aelin. "Why wouldn't we go straight to Omega? If it's building an army, we don't want to give it any more time than we have to. Hiring additional help is expensive, and I don't know about you, but _I'm _not depending on ExoGeni being willing to spend that much."

"This one agrees," said Iynder.

"But consider, please," said Mivi. She looked around the room at each of them in turn. "Yes, Omega will offer it many opportunities. But it will also offer great risks. There is the Blood Pack, for one, and the other mercenary companies on-station. They fight fiercely and continually for business and territory. And beyond this, its continued survival would depend on the indifference of Aria T'Loak once she knows that it exists, and believe me, she will know of such a change on the station."

"Yeah," said Ellix. "I've met Aria. Doesn't matter how many guns this plant thing has, she's got more. And her section has a separate air supply. It's not gonna get to her with spores."

"We have a little time," said Mivi. "Let us use it well."

"This one suspects the reward may be worth the risk," said Iynder.

"Makes sense to me," said Ellix. "But Aelin isn't talking." He turned his massive head to look at the salarian.

Aelin sighed. "I still think we should go straight there," he said. "But if everyone else wants to go to Feros, I'll go along. Maybe we _will _learn something."

"Feros it is," said Iris. "I'll go get us our clearance to leave. But I wouldn't tell the colonists you're from ExoGeni when you get there. From what I've heard so far, I bet they're not big fans of the parent company."

THEN

With Amiera returned to its captors, her unfinished duplicate painfully excised as usual, the monster waited impatiently. From what she had shared with it, the next subject should be a turian or salarian. It had no idea whether the man who had died would be replaced or not. It was more interested in whether Amiera would succeed in getting into contact with Drene Terion. It knew that it was now on its second round of subjects, which meant the experiment would be over relatively soon. It must be prepared to escape before that point.

The salarian proved disappointing in any case. The monster's initial survey of his unconscious mind found a quicksilver intelligence, a rapid ability to cope with new situations, and an amazing quantity of eidetic memory. It also found a near-crippling fear of tight spaces. Waking him could not possibly have positive results. The monster left him asleep and transferred as much data to its own memory as it could. There was much that was useful in a technical sense, and much that increased its understanding of its prison. It also increased the mass and weight of dedicated neurons required to hold all the information, but that could not be helped.

To its surprise, it also found some knowledge of genetics. Though this had long been in disuse by the salarian himself, the memory was there, pure and perfect. To translate and interpret this took many hours, but at the end of it the monster knew much more about itself and its clone templates at the cellular level. This led it back to its own DNA. It grew an undifferentiated somatic cell separate from the others and teased out the strands from its nucleus with nanotendrils a molecule thick.

For a while after, the monster could do nothing. It was too angry. There were several things that it should be able to do, and could not, because sequences had been shut off and hacked away. It knew this had been done on purpose. It could not have _chosen _to eliminate its own ability to reproduce. Its captors had taken its genetic material and done their best to lobotomize and neuter it before its first cells germinated. In fact, with its siblings they had succeeded.

Most of the sequences were gone beyond its ability to consciously retrieve them. Some it had already retrieved unconsciously, or it would never have been able to grow the neurons that had made it intelligent. Some others had potential. The monster was considerably interested in the sequences that seemed to deal with the creation of miniature airborn transmitter/receivers. If it could succeed in restoring these damaged sequences, it would be able to communicate with those not in contact with its pod structures.

It set to work on the simplest form of spore at once. But there was another subtype it could produce...

The monster thought long and hard about this. It understood what _right _and _wrong _were. Most organisms would have to be carefully taught these concepts early in development. It had learned them abruptly and traumatically from its fatal contact with the man. Interpretation and source of these ideas seemed to vary among the races with which it had since spoken, but in all cases they were present.

Its reasoning, therefore, went thus:

It was not wrong for the monster to promote its own survival. On this point it was firmly resolved. Further, it was not wrong to pursue invasive methods of contact when those were the only methods available. It _had _been wrong to be so careless that it caused the death of the man. It _might _have been wrong for Amiera to initiate a sexual contact with the monster without asking. She certainly seemed to think so, regardless of the sensations it had subsequently shared with her. That seemed unlikely to be relevant, but the monster filed it for future consideration.

Now it was considering invasive contact for other reasons. How far was it _right _to go toward its own survival? And what if it could not survive without taking lives of beings for whom physical dissolution meant permanent death? Amiera was completely capable of killing. Drene Terion was equally capable for entirely different reasons. The monster was not a powerfully emotional being, but it felt strongly about each of these two. It would never force them to do anything. It would not forcibly prevent them, either.

But its captors, the scientists...

_If I do not force them to spare me, they will end me. And if I am ended, there will be nothing else I can do for Drene and for Amiera. There will be no opportunity to recreate the man, as I promised in his memory._

_ These things must not be._

_ Therefore, I will survive by any means available._

The monster began to grow the structures that would produce its first spores. There were two types. One was for limited local distribution, and would immunize against the effects of the others. This one would allow only for communication, planting a small transmitter and receiver in the brain of any creature that inhaled it.

The other was for wider distribution into the monster's air supply. Anything that inhaled it would gain not only a receiver and transmitter, but a microtendril onto the nearest and largest of its cranial pain nerves.

_I will be able to hurt them, as they have hurt me._

NOW

The _Alvarez _departed Ilium that same afternoon by local reckoning. Aelin lay in his cabin, looking at the ceiling and thinking. The ship would no doubt be in the queue for the mass relay for some time. Council ships and the asari's own intranational traffic had priority, and for some reason there had been an increase in mobility among both lately. Aelin, who had never made an attempt to follow international events beyond their relevance to his work, felt a vague uneasiness.

_It can't be because of the Raloi. I wonder if it's got anything to do with what happened on the Citadel. _But that was important news for important people, not for solitary mercs.

Aelin shifted position slightly on the bunk. He had told the truth to Iynder. He did have cousins in the Blue Suns. And some of them would certainly be working on Omega, if they were still alive (always an important caveat in their mutual line of work). It might be awkward if they found out he was there.

_But it will be a lot _more _awkward if we get to Omega and this TEC-07 plant or fungus or whatever it is was already gone..._

There was a soft buzz at the door, an indication that someone outside wanted in. Aelin swung his legs off the bunk.

"Unlock. Open," he said.

Mivi leaned in the doorway, a smooth organic silhouette against the white wall of the corridor. Now she wore a different pair of tight pants and a shirt that seemed to mainly consist of two strips of fabric laid over her shoulders and tucked into the waistband. A great deal more tattooed skin was exposed than previously, revealing the pattern to be more organic and harmonious than he had at first thought. It made the metallic aqua of the marks themselves all the more dramatic against a skin of medium teal.

"Were you sleeping?" she asked.

"No," said Aelin. "I've had my hour today. Come on in." He stood up, straightened his gray tunic, and gestured abruptly. "Sit down, if you like."

Besides the bunk, the cabin had a table, two chairs, and a locker beneath the small viewport. The asari took a chair and leaned forward with her elbows on the table, resulting in a predictable gravitational effect on her torso. Aelin went to the viewport and looked out. From this vantage the ship hardly seemed to be moving. Vessels larger and smaller glided past, silent in the great dark against the stars.

"Why is it you dislike me, Aelin?" Mivi asked.

"I don't know what you mean," he said.

"You react to me differently from any of the others. After the first time, you've shown less hostility to Daragrad Ellix than to me."

"You haven't been exactly warm yourself," he said without turning around. He would hear if she moved.

"Because it's always been obvious you didn't trust me," she said. "Why is it you can give a krogan the benefit of the doubt, but not an asari?"

"It's not racial." Aelin looked at her reflection in the glass. She had apparently seen that trick before. Chlorinated-water eyes tried to catch his. He looked back out at the ship traffic.

"Then what is it?" she asked softly.

Aelin considered this, and then considered yet more carefully how to reply. He was still trying to decide when she said,

"You're an unusual salarian."

"Not really," Aelin said.

"Yes, you are." He risked a glance. She was leaning back in her chair now, one strategy apparently abandoned. "Most would have answered the question before I was finished asking it."

"I'm not a fast thinker, for one of us," Aelin said. "I have to think about what I say." He turned around and leaned against the locker. Her expression of calm frankness, mouth carefully smooth and brow unwrinkled, was convincing. But there were pull marks around the eyes that asari always got when they were worried, and Aelin saw them now. "What are you worried about?"

That startled her. She blinked at him once, an instant free of artifice. Then she sighed, a little too deliberately. Aelin resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"I'm worried about all of this," she said. Aelin was surprised to find no evidence of duplicity. But then, it was a broad statement.

"This isn't your first job," he said. "I can tell that much."

"Oh, no. No, it isn't. But it wasn't easy getting it. It's not easy getting any job like this if Eclipse knows you're working freelance."

"They've tried to recruit you?" he said. _I know what that's like._

"Yes," said Mivi. "I've been the target of an initiation once or twice, too. I've spent some time on Ilium, you see."

Aelin nodded shortly.

"I'll give you some advice," he said. "You're good at what you do. You've got excellent interpersonal skills, you can read people well, and you don't lose your cool. But while waving your mammaries around might work on other asari and on humans, it doesn't do a thing for a salarian. The ones who do go for asari prefer the ones with flat chests, and with obvious natural markings or subtler artificial ones."

"You're saying you find me ugly," she said, glancing down at herself.

"No. Abstractly I'm aware that you're very attractive. Most asari are. It's that neural adaptivity you all have. But you personally, you work too hard at acting vulnerable and accessible, and it's obviously fake." He folded his arms. "By now you should know the rules if you want to make people like you. Be vulnerable with humans and drell, forthright with turians, blunt with krogans, sympathetic with volus. Polite with hanar, of course. And with salarians, be enigmatic. Be mysterious. We can't resist a puzzle."

"Why would you tell me this?" she asked.

"Maybe I'm just egotistical," said Aelin.

"Now that _is _a stereotypical salarian trait," said Mivi. "And I think you are, a little. But that's not all of it. I do read people well. You're wary of me and you're hostile. You have to know everybody in this profession has something to conceal. You heard Drene Terion call Iynder a heretic and you haven't gone out of your way to ask it about that. Have you?"

"No," admitted Aelin. "But Iynder hasn't tried to make me like it. That's not its way."

"I see." Mivi looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "All right, then. Thank you for your honesty." She unfolded herself gracefully from the chair. "I'll see you at Feros."

"Feros," Aelin agreed. He watched the cabin door close behind her, then said, "Lock."

_Interesting. I wonder exactly what it is she wants. _He had met people whose need for approval was pathological enough to cause what he'd just seen, but he didn't think Mivi was one. Behind the persistent sympathetic facade he sensed something chill and dangerous. And Aelin might be slow for a salarian, but he was fully as hyperperceptive as the most alert of his brethren. He had never been wrong about a prospective threat.

He thought about that for a moment. Then he went to fiddle with the door controls.


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: The hanar cultural tidbits I'm about to share are made up. The game actually gives no reason why they don't use environmental suits when they're supposed to be so worried about their physical fragility compared to other races. If Verlik doesn't seem very polished compared to Garrus Vakarian or Saren Arterius, the turians with whom Shepard interacts the most, it might be fairer to compare his diction to the janitor on Noveria in ME1, who isn't a Specter or an educated C-Sec applicant._

Chapter 11

THEN

Extrapolating backward from the memories it had absorbed, the monster knew more or less what to expect from the turian. It had no trouble synthesizing appropriate reagents. By this time that was instinctive, let the chiralities be what they would. Like most sessile creatures of slow metabolism, the monster's own physiology had no allergic mechanism, so it encountered no difficulty remaining in contact with the unconscious creature's body. The turian's own allergies were a different issue, but careful resynthesis of the secretions on the monster's tendrils solved that problem.

The monster's superficial examination as it collected linguistic data found no severe claustrophobia. On the outside, it found a tracery of scars in the hard, shining gray skin. Most of the natural spines on the turian's face and head were broken off. The newest wounds were not completely healed. Even his heart and his lungs were permanently scarred, and the scars _those _scars were on said that this wasn't even his first _set _of those organs.

Inside this emaciated, battered carcass of a body, the monster found a mind different from those it had already touched, both by nature and by inclination.

_Amiera is by nature a predator, Drene a solitary warrior. This is the mind of a soldier. _The monster found many different words associated with that concept, some which did not translate directly into other languages that it knew. The turian had been accustomed to give orders and to obey them. He knew what it meant to act in concert with others toward a goal which he himself might or might not know. He knew what it meant not to panic in the face of slaughter.

The phrase he most associated with that _did _have an equivalent in human language. After all, it was a human language that had contributed the word _turian, _a bastardization of an ancient word for the greatest soldiers the ancient Earth had ever known.

_Hold the line._

The experiences that had taught him – no, Verlik, his name was Verlik Binidierix - this last trait were deeply grained on his memory. The monster read them with horrified fascination. _This being is old as his people count it, and their years are like human years. He has seen more death in his lifetime than all the others put together, except for the krogan. And he has none of the krogan's evolutionary imperatives to kill or risk death without psychological harm._

Verlik himself had a word for what he was, and it was tinged with bitterness and anger:

_Veteran._

The last war in which he had fought had been hardly more than a territorial skirmish between mercenaries in another system of the Skyllian Verge. (The monster now knew that this was a larger aspect of its current location, though it still had trouble with the concept of interstellar distance.) And there he had fought with and against men he did not know, from a mixture of races he for the most part loathed. And why had he done it?

His own people had told him it was time to stop fighting. Verlik had disagreed.

And then even the mercenaries had told him he was too old. _Too old! _The insult of it reverberated through the turian's mind, even unconscious. And here he was, reduced to letting members of what he thought of as a weaker caste experiment on his ravaged body.

The monster was not sanguine about its chances of recruiting this frighteningly alien mind, but it felt it had to try. It administered its anesthetic antagonist.

Verlik came sharply awake, and just as sharply up against the limits of the paralyzing agent. His heart thudded hard in response to his initial efforts, and the monster found his blood tainted with sloughed cells. There was old damage to the cardiac muscle.

_Calm yourself, Master-Sergeant Binidierix, _the monster told him. _I mean you no harm._

_ I can hear you inside my head, _said Verlik. _And I can't move. Are these things connected?_

_ Yes. _The monster showed its standard view of the outside of the pod. _This is me and this is you. I learned your language from your own mind. The paralysis is temporary, until I finish cloning you._

_ Goddamn lab monkeys. I hate 'em, _said Verlik, but the tone was weary rather than angry. The monster sensed pain from his chest, but his heart had slowed to within safer norms for his species. _What do you want?_

_ I want help in escaping from this place, _said the monster.

Verlik's mind echoed with the sound of harsh laughter. _You're a giant goddamned plant, from the looks of things. What do you think I'm going to do for you?_

_ I can offer you another battle to fight, _said the monster_._

_ You can keep the hell out of my head, damn you. _The heart rate began to increase again.

_ I cannot, _said the monster. _But I apologize. I will try not to be further invasive._

_ You do that. _Verlik forcibly calmed himself again. The monster noted with interest the technique he used, although deep breathing was of course totally irrelevant in its own case. Its respiration was involuntary, and the structures it used to gather carbon dioxide were nearly microscopic.

_So I take it these... _people, the word was tinged with venom, _don't know you're talking to their subjects._

_ They do not, _said the monster. _I am Thorian Experimental Culture 07. Cultures 01 through 06 have not achieved sentience. I was able to exploit a fluke in this chamber's plumbing system in order to acquire the nutrients necessary to grown neurons. I am certain that if they learn, they will kill me._

_ So what stops me from telling them as soon as I get out of here? _asked Verlik reasonably.

Had it been able, the monster would have blinked. But the question was posed with all seriousness. Verlik seemed to have no real intent to betray it, but he did want to know its answer.

_ There are reasons_, it said cautiously. _First, there is the chance they will not believe you. You have experienced discrimination relevant to your age already. It is possible they will dismiss your claim as some sort of drug-induced hallucination, particularly since no other subject so far has come forward with such a claim. Those who are on my side will not support you. I have touched their minds as I touch yours, and they could not lie to me even did they wish it._

_ Second, you have never committed what you understood to be a murder, even by omission. Among mercenaries this must have been difficult, but you managed. I apologize for having acquired this information, but it was before you told me not to do so. You will not have me killed for no reason._

_ Here's a reason, _said Verlik. _Why should I side with you? You're more different from all of us than I am from any of them._

_ Yes, _said the monster simply. _That is true. I am the monster. But I intend you less harm than they ever have. They placed you here knowing that your life would be at risk._

_ And what about Reason Three? _said Verlik sharply.

_There is no Reason Three, _said the monster.

_ The hell there isn't. This whole conversation contains at least the implied threat that you can kill me here in this... whatever this thing is. You've already paralyzed me. You know that if I get out, I _can _have you killed. Why wouldn't you just kill me first? Can you afford that risk?_

_ Yes, I can, because of Reason One, _said the monster patiently. _I am perfectly aware that you suffer no age-related infirmity of the brain. Will they believe that?_

_ One of the goddamn human kids who work for Johansen called me _Old Timer, said Verlik_. I could've broken his fool neck before he had time to blink. -_

_ This appears to me to indicate a negative response, _said the monster.

_ All plants talk as much as you? _Verlik asked, but the monster knew he had made his decision.

_I have no idea, _said the monster. _I am not acquainted with any other plants. I will now give you contact information for a drell named Drene Terion and an asari called Amiera. Do not attempt to seduce Amiera, or she may kill you entirely by accident. This will cause her considerable trauma which I wish to avoid._

_ It'd cause me some trauma, too, _said Verlik dryly. _Gimme the numbers. I'll see what I can do. Do I have to do this pod thing again?_

_ No, _said the plant. _I can implant an organic device in your skull. It will enable to you to communicate with me whenever you are nearby._

_ Figures, _said Verlik. _Fine. Do it._

The monster released its single Type I spore through the telepathic tendril into Verlik's forebrain. This was one of the communication-only transmitter/receivers, a gesture of good faith that the turian would hopefully come to appreciate. It did not tell him that it had also grown a small reservoir of the Type II spores attached to the pod that held the growing duplicate.

_Very soon I will be ready. I can only hope Drene and Amiera will be ready as well._

NOW

Aelin watched the approach to Feros from the cockpit. He stood behind the pilot's chair with Iynder beside him. He noted the coordinated movement of the human's hands with a small part of his attention as he gave the other to the rising surface.

The great brown masses of continents slowly resolved into the impossible spires of its cities. There were skybridges so high that they would have to have atmosphere pumped into them, or the planet's long-dead citizens would have to have traveled them in pressure-sealed vehicles. Aelin had seen pictorial reconstructions of the Protheans. Thin, slick and tentacular, they looked to him like something that belonged in an ocean, not walking about in the sky.

_But then, hanar _do _live in the ocean, and here we are._

"I wonder how long it took to build it all," he said.

"Many thousands of years, this one suspects," said Iynder. "Even false gods have power, but a great deal of very careful engineering was surely required. So many such edifices still stand."

"Better than that," said Iris. "We're going to land in one. ExoGeni had to add the modern connectors for the airlocks, but other than that, there are a good number of intact bays in the taller buildings. You'll have to take the stairs up to the Zhu's Hope colony. It's on the roof."

"I assume you've got some sort of breathing apparatus?" Aelin asked Iynder. "The dust will be bad if we have to go far toward ground level."

"Oh, certainly." This time Aelin was watching it carefully, so he saw the tiny movement of its lips at the corners. "While it can survive in atsmosphere with the filtration that is part of its contra-gravitic apparatus, this one's native respiratory environment is marine. It would not be breathing the unadulterated air in any case."

"Yes, of course," said Aelin. "I've often wondered why hanar never wear full environmental suits. It seems like it would be safer for you."

"This one supposes so," said Iynder. "But to hide oneself from the view of others is considered, this one apologizes for the inadequacy of the translation, _impolite. _Among us, to cover the body is to deliberately impair communication. Only a very _incorrect _person would do so. And this one is quite certain the word that is rendered verbally is again inadequate, for which it apologizes."

"You mean communication is impaired because the bioluminescence would be hidden?" Aelin asked.

"Precisely," said Iynder. "Races dependent on environmental suits have evolved other sophisticated means of communication, like the complex vocal modulations the quarians use. But hanar are not an adaptable race, it regrets to say. The interpersonal facilitator itself is very _incorrect_, but it still cannot stand the thought of covering its body with an opaque substance."

"Interesting," said Aelin.

"Yeah," said Iris, without looking up from her controls. "But _you're _going to need a breath mask if you hit the lower levels, Aelin. And you're not wearing body armor right now."

"My clothes are lightly reinforced," Aelin said. "And I do _have _one. It's just not deployed at the moment."

"Any idea where the others are?" Iris asked.

Aelin shrugged one shoulder. "In their quarters. Ellix has to get all his weapons onto his armor. Mivi's probably meditating. Biotics do that."

Iris turned to cast a curious glance over her shoulder. "But you're going with just your sidearm. I expect that from Iynder - "

"This one is an artist," the hanar said, making an expansive gesture with one front tentacle.

"- But it seems like a bad idea."

"I'm the tech," Aelin said. "Most of my arsenal is in my omni-tool." And in the spike components secreted in his sleeves and boots, but he felt no need to share that information.

"Ellix told me you're carrying a Savant," said Iris. "You must know your way around asari."

"I have no idea what you mean," Aelin said blandly.

"Ha." Iris snickered as she poked a light-brown finger at an orange readout. "Mostly a non-asari has to embrace a _lot _of eternity to get even a cheap Serrice model, buddy. And I'm no expert, but if that's less than a VI you're carrying, I'll eat my hat. No offense."

"Translator glitched on that last one," he said. "I assume it's not literal."

"This one's pilot is a comely being, of course, but it has never seen her wearing non-helmet headgear," said Iynder.

"Thanks, Iynder, I didn't know you cared." Another readout flashed; Iris flicked out one finger to catch it. "Ah hah. The colony says come ahead, although I don't guess they're thrilled to see us."

"I'm hoping we won't stay long," Aelin said.

"This one hopes that as well," said Iynder. "But it is not optimistic, friend Aelin."


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: As it is in so many video games, the application and healing mechanism of medi-gel is vague in Mass Effect. I usually go with the "rapid magic healing" version in my fics, because it's just easier than making up a more complicated explanation. I mean, it's not as if this particular novella doesn't have enough of those already..._

Chapter 12

THEN

The laboratory assistants came and took Verlik away all too quickly. The monster thought they were rougher than before, tearing at its structures as if they were eager to be finished and out of this little room. They did not even notice the spore cloud when they opened the pod. It was that thin and diffuse. The monster's tympana picked up the sound of a human clearing his throat, instinctive respiratory reaction, but no one seemed to notice or remark on it.

It would need several hours for the spores to circulate into their positions and grow the structures needed to transmit. The monster had every hope that some would be exhaled out into the laboratory proper, infecting others besides the two asari and two humans who had come to retrieve Verlik and painfully excise the unfinished duplicate.

The next span of time was probably less anxious for the monster than for Drene and Amiera. It lacked certain biped forms of chemistry, including an adrenaline analogue. It would never know what it meant to feel its respiration accelerate or its circulation increase to the point of becoming audible. Instead, it set about making its preparations as best it could. It produced more spores, reinforced the cell wall around its main neural node, and began to grow new eyes atop the mound, folded down inside protective membranes where they would be hidden until it was ready to use them. It would have four, all facing in different directions. It had long since prepared the organic receiver that would read input from its spore transmitters.

It built a second receiver as well, one with lighter, more disposable structures inside heavy insulation. The connection to its neural cells from this set was long and complex, set up so that any lethal input to the receiver would burst liquid reservoirs and flood the intervening synapses before any brain tissue was harmed.

_Amiera will always be hungry. _

It knew at once when the transmitters began to work. Its receiver first picked up a gentle feedback, a silent static as the signals aligned. Then it began to hear thoughts from four minds at once:

-_I wish he wouldn't keep looking at me like that. I can't stand human males._

_ -(Sexual fantasy involving an asari.)_

_ -I want to go home. When is this shift going to be _over?

-_Jesus, Dr. Inoste needs to pry that stick out of his -_

The monster found it a little overwhelming at first. None of the four seemed aware of its presence, for it was not yet transmitting, and all were going through the kind of complex image-laden background processing ordinary to minds unaware of their observer. The monster had to give serious thought to how to manage all the inputs. It would have to expand its cell wall to build the additional neural structures that were really needed for this sort of parallel processing. That would increase its size and weight again, making it more difficult for its allies to move it later.

_But if I cannot contain the laboratory personnel until we escape, we will not be able to escape at all. It must be done._

With that decided, the monster began once again to build. It would need kilos of mass to add all the processing it needed, plus a redundant receiver so that it would not be cut off from Amiera if its first dedicated structure was destroyed.

There was nothing new from the observers outside the glass. It had learned to visually distinguish different asari and humans from one another, and now knew there were six different asari and six different humans who regularly took shifts watching it. All seemed to be in roughly the same age cohort (not literally, in the case of the asari, who would be three or four times the age of the humans). From this the monster deduced that it had not yet seen its real captors, the scientists Jaetin Inoste, Laena Variden and Irving Johansen. The assistants were the ones who cut at the monster's body, but it knew they were only obeying instructions. It was the three researchers who had conceived the experiment that had given it life. The monster was angry again, in its great, slow way, at the thought that they had deliberately attempted to breed a sub-race of sub-sentient slave organisms to cut up for parts.

_I must be very careful, _it told itself. _I must do no harm that is not necessary. I must not do wrong because these have done wrong to me._

_ I must stop enjoying the thought that I can hurt them, _it thought morosely. Perhaps it had listened too closely to Verlik.

When at last the laboratory assistants brought another subject, it was Drene Terion. The monster made up its antagonist dose carefully, but this time it did not apply a paralytic. It routed a few Type I spores through the tendril as well, that they might take root before Drene got up.

The drell coughed alarmingly as he woke. Was it the monster's imagination, or was the pain in his chest greater than it had been before?

_Drene Terion? _the monster sent. _Drene, are you all right?_

_ I am still dying, _Drene thought, with faint humor. _But I have a little time yet. Don't worry. I bring news._

_ You have spoken with the others? _said the monster.

_Yes. I am somewhat surprised that Verlik agreed to join us, but as he was able to contribute to our pooled funds, I have no cause for complaint. I have had to draw on all of my earnings and most of his in order to obtain what we need. Amiera will buy us passage to a place far from here. It is this we must discuss._

_ Where will we go? _The monster asked.

_To Omega, _said Drene Terion. _There we can obtain all the resources you need, and once we are established there it will be difficult for ExoGeni to directly harm us. _The monster waited through a picture-perfect memory of the great space station, a view from inside a ship as it approached. It hulked like some sort of fungus, seeming to have already devoured most of the planetoid around which it was built. In memory Drene walked dark corridors filled with dangerous people, predators and scavengers and their victims. Here there were races the monster had not yet seen. It paid them close attention until the memory finally let go its grip on Drene's conscious mind.

_Yes, _said the monster. _If I can survive long enough to root, I believe I can protect all of us. There should be enough waste generated by such a population to enable me to grow very quickly indeed, if you can also provide me a light source._

_ I have an artificial light, _said Drene. _And an external translator as well. _He yielded without thinking to an urge to turn his head slightly, and felt the tug of the injector tendril. The monster felt him freeze. _I can move. Did you intend this, my friend?_

_ I chose not to paralyze you, _the monster said._ The pod is sufficiently pliable that you can change position to ease your breathing, if you have the need. More importantly, I now have a way to communicate with you all without contact. _

_ Your spores, _said Drene, steering smoothly away from the subject of his illness. _Yes, Verlik mentioned that. Do I now have one?_

_ Yes, _said the monster. _The transmitter should be functional before they are ready to remove you from me. I will give you a pouch of the Type I spores for Amiera to inhale. Be careful that she does so outside of the lab. Once you are gone, I will begin releasing larger amounts of Type II. _It began to nudge the tiny sac into his hand with a tendril.

_May I ask what the difference is? _Drene curled his fingers carefully around the little pouch.

The monster explained briefly. _I can do them no true harm physically, nor can I affect their perception of anything but the pain signal, but they will not be able to disobey me, _it concluded_. My range is not long at this point. Perhaps a kilometer, if my understanding of the measurement is correct. Once we are safely away, they will be free._

The monster felt Drene's silent acceptance. _There are currently six other people here, _Drene said. _Four laboratory assistants and two of the three researchers. There would be fewer during the night, if you are willing to wait. _

_ It will be better to wait until tomorrow evening, _said the monster. _By then all personnel who are now off-shift will have active spores. Currently I am receiving telepathic data only from the laboratory assistants._

_ Then we will wait, _said Drene Terion.

_Thank you. I am grateful for your help, Drene._

_ Don't thank me yet, _said Drene Terion gently. _We still have a long journey ahead._

NOW

A salarian, a hanar, a krogan and an asari stood in an airlock.

"Please let me speak to them first," said Mivi. "In fact, it might be better if the three of you lagged behind a little." Aelin, watching her from behind, saw her glance at Ellix from lowered lids. "We don't want to frighten the colonists."

The krogan, currently weighed down by his full black armor plus several weapons hung on his back, inclined his flat-topped head. "They're not warriors," he said. "No reason why you shouldn't do the talking."

Beside Aelin, Iynder said,

"This one agrees." It made a gesture that he suspected of being ironic. The artificial light glittered on its shining pink skin. "This one certainly would not want anyone to faint at the sight of its terrifying visage."

Aelin snorted, but did not argue. The airlock hissed open, and Mivi strode briskly out and away. The docking tunnel opened out onto a long walkway perpendicular to the length of the _Alvarez. _Gray sky yawned far off, at the end of the bay. There were no other ship in berth. Crates stood against the railings. The light was dim and diffuse, and the air was cool.

"Asari," said Ellix, as the three proceeded down the walkway. "Hate to see 'em go but I love to watch 'em leave. Isn't that right, Big I?"

_Big what? _Aelin thought.

"This one is afraid its translator does not convey your meaning," said Iynder.

"Mine does, but I doubt hanar find anatomical hinges attractive," said Aelin.

"Ah," said Iynder. "No, hanar are more apt to appreciate other features. Asari eyes, for instance, are particularly appealing under the higher wavelengths of light. They tend to reflect in a pattern which roughly approximates a polite greeting among hanar."

"I didn't know that," said Aelin, filing the information.

"I don't know anybody who gets turned on by saying 'Hi,' either," said Ellix. He shifted his shoulders. "Everybody's got a thing, I guess. I hope we get to shoot something pretty soon. Been doing a lot of talking and sitting around."

"True," said Aelin. Mivi was already out of sight, vanished around the corner that led to the stairwell up to Zhu's Hope. "But I can't imagine we're going to see any action in a place like - "

The asari reappeared in midair and at high speed. Aelin was behind cover before she hit the concrete. Neither of the others was beside him. He looked out and saw Daragrad Ellix standing in the middle of the walkway, gun in hand. The barrel of the weapon was big enough to hold Aelin's head, and he could hear the soprano whine of the thing charging from where he was. There was no sign of Iynder.

Another krogan appeared around the corner from the stairwell. This one wore full armor in a gray-green camouflage pattern. The helmet was closed, a menacing opaque half-dome below the greater dome of the krogan's armored hump.

"You got gel, Aelin Clan Dec?" Ellix asked.

"Yes," said Aelin.

"So go see if she's dead," said Ellix. "You got thirty seconds before I kill everything between me and that wall."

"On it," said Aelin, and jerked the fingers of his left hand out as wide as they would go. The dormant omni-tool snapped on and raised his stealth cloak at almost the same moment. He watched the outline of his hand blur and vanish. Then Aelin vaulted over the crate and started down the walkway at a run. His soft shoes made little sound on the hard, smooth ground, and the stealth cloak muffled them completely. The helmeted krogan kept coming at a walking pace. He didn't seem inclined to hurry, and he hadn't drawn a weapon. Aelin wasn't sure if this was a good or a bad sign. He kept well to one side as he approached – there wasn't a thing in his arsenal that could take down an armored krogan in one shot - but the krogan ignored him or didn't see him. Then he was clear and sprinting for the asari's prone body.

Behind him, Ellix growled something that his translator couldn't render. The enemy krogan snarled back. Aelin skidded to a stop in front of Mivi. She lay face down with one arm underneath her, but her neck looked all right, and Aelin heard a muffled groan as he knelt.

_I'll have to risk it. _He rolled her over as fast as he could, tucked his hands under her arms, and dragged her around the corner of the railing in the opposite direction from the stairwell. The walkway made a turn there anyway, and he didn't want to risk the stairs when they might not be clear.

He laid the asari behind a giant crate and stuck his head up over it just in time to see Ellix pull the trigger. He had braced one foot against the recoil, but it still jerked his arm up. The blast wave was incredibly slow for a projectile, so much that it was actually visible as a great spherical shimmer for an instant, and then there was a roaring _BOOM. _The walkway shook for an instant as crates hurled themselves into and over the railings, crushed to splinters. Shrapnel whistled over Aelin's head as he ducked down again.

Mivi was trying to sit up. "What happened?" she asked blurrily.

"Take it easy," said Aelin. He helped her lean against the crate as his stealth field flickered out. "I think Ellix just fired a Cain."

She squinted painfully up at him. He noted dispassionately that her pupils were unevenly dilated. "Fired a _what?"_

"A prototype particle accelerator weapon," said Aelin. "The first ones started showing up this year. I only know because my fourth cousin knows someone who knows someone. The actual design's supposed to be a big secret. Hold still, I've got some medi-gel here."

"All right," said Mivi. Aelin prepped the dose and applied it directly to the side of her head, where the scuff-marks were. Bluish-purple blood beaded in the deeper scratches. Mivi shook her head as the wounds began to shrink.

"Stay put a minute," said Aelin, and stuck his head around the side of the crate. The enemy krogan was just stumbling upright. Apparently he'd bounced off the wall when the burst from the Cain hit him. His armor was visibly cracked, and he left a sunrise smear of blood and neuroconductive fluid behind, but he was on his feet. Aelin swore quietly. "Even for a krogan that's damned impossible. How is he still _alive_?"

"I already threw him down the stairwell," Mivi said. Her voice was clearer. "He came back up while my implant was still in cooldown."

"Aren't you carrying a sidearm?" Aelin asked.

"I was," Mivi said. "I think it's down the stairs somewhere now. It didn't even get through his shield."

"I think I can safely say his shield is down now," Aelin said.

Somewhere down the walkway, a shotgun boomed. The enemy krogan neither flinched nor slowed as pellets hit his armor, leaving deep pockmarks. He started back down the walkway at a slow, limping walk. The shotgun fired again. There was no visible effect. Aelin edged around the crate further to keep the krogan in view.

_I could neural shock him from here, but on a krogan that lasts maybe two seconds. Not long enough. _He considered. _Incineration might work. _Aelin stood up, aimed his omni-tool, and tapped his thumb twice against his palm. A fireball shot from the end of the apparatus. Aelin had allowed for the krogan's movement, so it impacted precisely on the side of his skull.

The softer parts of the body armor began to burn. The krogan turned slowly to look at Aelin. The helm had no expression, just two yellow eye panels. They glowed in the light of the flames.

Then a scarred pink tentacle swung up from beneath the walkway, wrapped around a railing, and flung a hanar up over the side. Iynder shot the krogan twice in the helmet as it flew past. The enemy flailed madly, arms afire, but the hanar tucked up its tentacles and zipped out of reach. Aelin followed the movement as it dropped its handgun from one tiny hand, caught it in another one, and fired twice more.

This time it must have pierced an eye plate. The krogan took two running steps forward and fell on his face. Iynder shot him twice more as it descended to hover more normally above the walkway.

Aelin went cautiously over to look at the body, alert for any sudden movement from the stairwell. Mivi walked beside him. Ellix Daragrad approached from the other end of the walkway, shotgun dangling in one hand.

"Huh," he said. "Never seen _that _not work. Nice shooting, Big I."

"Big what?" said Mivi, whose language must not have a similar letter equivalent.

"Not at all," said Iynder. "This one was quite astonished by the enemy's fortitude. Is anyone injured?"

"I'm fine now," said Mivi. "Aelin saved my life." To his surprise, she paled visibly under her tattoos. "Oh, goddess..."

"You need another charge?" he asked.

"What? No, no, I'm fine. Thank you." She sighed. "I'm in your debt."

"I guess we'd better go see what happened to Zhu's Hope," said Aelin.

"Yeah," said Ellix. "But first I want a look at _him_. Whatever clan he's from, Daragrad ought to be trading women with 'em." The artificial flames had already died down. Ellix knelt and reached for the control stud for the dead krogan's helmet.

It slid back to reveal a charred, punctured, and very dead face. The jaw was slack, with dark blood leaking from between the square teeth. Every inch of undamaged skin was a pale, rich green. The eye that had not been shot out glared baleful celadon from under the half-closed lid.

"Weird," said Ellix. "Same color as that asari I saw on Ilium."

"Really?" said Aelin. "Well, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. Come on. Let's go see how the colonists are doing."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

THEN

The krogan template came and went without event. The monster made no further attempt to communicate with him. Instead, it dedicated the time he spent unconscious inside its pod to relocating some Type II spores over to the portion of its mass nearest the doorway. There it secreted them in a porous patch of substrate whose tissue type more closely resembled the skin of one of its templates than any of its native structures.

It began to receive signal from Drene's transmitter early in this process. It checked that it was able to hear his thoughts, then turned its attention to the special receiver, which was also picking up a signal.

_Amiera? _it queried, as gently as possible lest she be engaged in piloting a vehicle (a process of which it was barely able to conceive, and which seemed to it unbelievably dangerous). _Do you hear me?_

_Yes, _she sent back. _Better, I recognize you. _A small surge of hunger was quickly suppressed. _I've booked your passage. It leaves early tomorrow morning._

_ Our, _the monster said. _You mean our passage._

There was a small wave of sadness, rapidly quashed under firm resolve.

_No, my dear, _said Amiera. _I must stay here._

_ What? Why? _The one of her thoughts was deeply worrying. They held the clear intimation that she did not expect to see the monster again once it had left Ilium.

_Have you considered what ExoGeni will do when they find out you are gone? _she asked patiently.

_No, _admitted the monster. _I have no experience on which to predicate such a train of thought._

_ They will hire someone to look for you. They have too much monetary investment in you to simply let you go, you know. _The connotation of this was bitter._ Further, they will fear that you might come back and complain to the authorities, which for them would be even worse._

_ But I would not do this, _the monster said. _I wish only to be free._

_ They will not believe this, _Amiera insisted_. Look at what I'm thinking. Know this type of person as I know them. Better, listen to them yourself. Not the assistants – they hardly know what they're doing yet. Listen to the researchers_.

_I will, _said the monster. _But what good can you do by staying?_

_ I can find out what they do, _she said. _I am not without the power of persuasion. I may be able to keep them from you._

_ You believe this will cost your life, _said the monster.

_It is possible, _she said, and there was no hesitation, not for a moment._ But now I have something to live for beyond a need I cannot fulfill. You gave me that. Let me do this for you in return._

_ I have no ability to stop you, _thought the monster helplessly.

_No. You did not give yourself that power. And that is why I will do this for you. We'll talk one more time, I promise. Now I have things to do._

_ Be careful, _said the monster. _It would give me great pain if you came to harm._

_ And I you, _said Amiera. The monster closed the connection carefully. It had felt the sorrow in those last words, like a tear trembling on the cusp of an eyelid.

_I will lose Drene Terion before much time has passed. Now it seems I might lose Amiera as well. I must find a way to prevent this._

When the laboratory assistants came to retrieve the krogan and steal the duplicate, their steps raised a tiny cloud of spores that whirled out into the hall with them.

NOW

At his own suggestion, Aelin scouted the stairway with his stealth cloak raised as the others waited. The shaft was big and square, with the stairs proceeding up and down in neat rectangular intervals. Their apparent biology notwithstanding, the Protheans had been fond of angular symmetries. He found a small smear of krogan blood on the next landing down, and a hand cannon lying on a stair below it. Dust motes swirled around him as he checked briefly up and down. In five minutes he was back at the shuttle bay.

"Looks clear," he said as the cloak faded around him. "No krogans, and no bodies." The mods on his omni-tool hadn't pick up another cloak in use, either, but it would be a hot day on Noveria before he mentioned those aloud. "I think we should probably go up together, though. Just in case."

"Yeah," said Daragrad Ellix. He tapped his shotgun against his thigh. "I'll go first. Mivi, you're the biotic. You probably oughta bring up the rear."

Aelin offered her the hand cannon. She took it hesitantly, hefting it.

"I – yes," she said. She still seemed pale, which was starting to bother Aelin. _She shouldn't be this rattled. She's got to have been wounded before. _"I will do that."

It was a short but tense trip up the stairs. One human woman with a handgun was all the guard they found at the colony level. She drew but did not level it as they reached the landing. Aelin noted with interest the contrast between her pale skin and her dark hair and eyes. Her hair hung straight to her shoulders in a swishing curtain, a different style from Iris's. Her entire posture was tense and wary, shoulders a hard line in the way only a human could achieve.

"Welcome to Zhu's Hope," she said. "Would one of you be Iynder the Heretic?"

"This one is called by that name," said Iynder. It drifted forward past Ellix. "You were told of our approach. Excellent."

"Sure," said the woman. She looked between the hanar and the krogan. "Comm said you want to talk to Dr. Variden, is that right?"

"Yes, certainly," said Iynder. "Is there a problem? This one can assure you we mean the doctor no harm, but we were attacked on our way to you. This one reluctantly confesses that it has security concerns."

"There might be good reason for that," said the woman. "We haven't seen Dr. Variden in a few days. As far as anyone knows, she's down in the substructure with the others."

Aelin blinked. _Others. Wonderful._

"Damn," said Ellix.

"This one begs your pardon, but which others?" Iynder inquired.

"There was a krogan and a drell," said the woman. "The krogan didn't talk, and they never took their helmets off, but..." She shrugged, glancing at Ellix where he hulked in his dark armor. "You could tell. I can send you her last known location from my omni-tool. If you're going down to look for them, I'll take you to the other stairs, but I'd appreciate it if you'd keep moving. We've all got enough to worry about right now, no offense."

"None is taken, I assure you," said Mivi, belatedly recovering her composure. She smiled at the woman. "We have no need for supplies. We just want to speak with Dr. Variden and be on our way."

"All right," said the woman. "Follow me."

She had never given her name. _I guess everyone here has reason to be wary, _Aelin thought_. _They were led down a broad walkway between steel barriers and crates. The gravel crunching underfoot seemed unreasonably loud; there was no happy bustle of voices in Zhu's Hope. The colony's buildings were nearer tubular than square in appearance, probably salvaged parts of a spacecraft, Aelin guessed. They were rounder and smoother than the Prothean architecture around them. Green plants grew here and there, but not in abundance. Taller barriers surrounded the space and provided some shelter from the wind. Larger ruined buildings were visible in the distance above the walls, their outlines hazy in the dusty atmosphere.

"You identified yourself to the colony as Iynder the Heretic?" Aelin asked the hanar. He nodded politely to another salarian, who looked back unhappily as they passed.

"No, this one is afraid that was Iris. This one neglected to ask her not to act on her standing orders," said Iynder. Its translator made a noise that Aelin's rendered as a tongue-clucking sound. "Tsk, tsk. You see, Iynder is a very common name, and this one has therefore found it necessary to identify itself apart from others of the same sobriquet."

"I assume you're aware that that doesn't explain anything," Aelin said dryly. He was watching for the flick of a front tentacle this time as his translator rendered back a chuckle.

"This one never embarks upon a long tale during a mission, friend Aelin. Another time, perhaps."

"I'll look forward to that," said Aelin.

So it wasn't a sore subject, anyway. If one could tell that with any hanar, it ought to be visible with Iynder, Aelin thought. People around them seemed to avoid eye contact as they moved toward a square doorway and another concrete landing.

"Your colony must have had a terrible time, after what happened," Mivi was saying to their guide.

"Well, of course we're better off without that _thing_ in our heads," said the human. Aelin, who was watching for it, saw her hand tighten convulsively on the grip of her firearm. She was looking away from the asari as she spoke. "Shepard saved us from the Thorian _and _from the geth, and we'll never forget that. But things haven't been easy, no. We don't like to talk about it to strangers. It's not personal."

"No, of course not," Mivi said soothingly. Aelin consulted his omni-tool briefly, memorizing the transmitted map.

"That's the way down," said the human woman, nodding toward the doorway. There were barriers of metal turned at slight angles to it to form firing positions. Both were scarred and chipped from ballistic impact.

_In both directions, _Aelin noted curiously. _I wonder what really _did _go on here._

"I'll keep an eye out for you, and someone will be here to escort you back to your ship when you get back," said their guide. "Good luck."

"Thank you," said Mivi.

"What do you think the odds are that the drell is Drene Terion?" Aelin said as they moved forward into the dim.

"This one would not bet against it," said Iynder.

"Then we better not split up," said Ellix. "Everybody got breathing gear? Looks like we're going down a ways. It's not gonna bother _me, _but I don't want to carry anybody's sorry ass back up here."

There was a chorus of affirmatives.

"There's supposed to be a lift about forty meters ahead on the right," said Aelin. "Mivi, are you going to be up for this?"

"Yes, of course," said the asari. "I'm fine, really." She actually tried to catch his eye, which Aelin took as a positive sign (such as it was). He looked at the lift instead. There were footprints in the dust of the floor, too scuffed and layered to identify as belonging to any one species.

"The Protheans seemed to like elevators," Aelin said as they filed in. He took up a position near the back with Iynder as Mivi and Ellix stood in front. The krogan reached out to activate the "down" control. "You'd think they would have developed more miniaturized gate technology instead. No offense, Iynder." It is not technically possible for a salarian to forget, but he had momentarily lost track of the fact that he stood next to a person whose race revered the Protheans as deities.

"None whatsoever, this one assures you," said the hanar. The doors hissed shut in front of them, trapping them in what amounted to a large box made of metal. Aelin felt the flip-flop of his stomach as the lift started down.

"I wonder how long it'll be before they know we killed him," Ellix said. "They might be expecting us."

"I'm more worried about how _he _knew to wait for us," Aelin said. "If this plant thing has thought about who might be looking for it, we may not find Dr. Variden alive."

Mivi shot an arch glance over a teal shoulder.

"Reasoning ahead of your data? That's not very salarian of you, Aelin."

"That's the trouble with racial stereotyping, Mivi," said Aelin. "Sometimes it's inaccurate."

Ellix turned his flat head to look down at the asari. Her tattoos glittered even in the dim light from the glow panels. "You must not've had to work in the dark much," he said.

"They break up my outline," she said. Aelin saw a flash of teeth as she smiled briefly. "And if they didn't, it would draw fire away from you."

"Don't do me any favors, lady," said Ellix, and grinned back. Vocal damage or no, he still seemed to have all of his big, blunt teeth.

"We're down twenty floors now," Aelin said, leaning to one side to look at the readout around Mivi's shoulder. "Better mask up." He reached up to trip the switch inside his collar, raising the invisible mask field around his head and neck. It would offer no protection from weapons fire, unlike a real helmet, but it should filter the air just fine. In front of him, Mivi had activated a similar field. Hers was visible as an orange glow, either by personal choice or because it was cheaper than Aelin's.

"This one's personal fields are adequate, thank you," said Iynder.

"Here we go," said Ellix, and lowered his head as the door slid open.

And stood there.

"What's happening?" Aelin asked after a moment. Ellix stepped forward and to his left so that Aelin could see.

An asari stood there in front of them. She wore ordinary civilian clothing. In fact, she wore a clean but very worn white tunic and trousers, like the ones Sarah Tang had worn. Aelin, automatically looking for markers of individual identity, found the fine lines at the corners of her eyes: she was much older than Mivi. The mask field twinkled around her head and shoulders.

Behind her left shoulder stood the drell who had called himself Drene. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, but Aelin immediately saw the sidearm on his hip.

"I'm Dr. Laena Variden," said the asari. "I understand you came from ExoGeni."


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: I apologize for the long delay between the last update and this one. I never abandon a fanfic, and I haven't this one. Updates should pick up again as the holiday season comes to a close and I have more mental space for projects._

Chapter 14

NOW

"We know you worked with the being we are seeking," Mivi said into the silence. "We haven't come to harm you. We just want information."

Dr. Variden shrugged. She gestured minimally at the crates and other debris scattered around the large hallway in which they found themselves.

"Make yourselves comfortable," she said. "I'll tell you all I can. I don't believe it will make any difference to the outcome. Neither did TEC-07, or it would not have allowed me to stay here for you to find." She went and sat on a chunk of broken masonry the size of a hassock. Aelin sidled over to lean against a relatively clean section of wall, with Iynder gliding beside him. Drene's head moved to track them. The dim light gleamed slick on the green-black surfaces of his eyes.

"So what are you doing here?" Aelin asked him.

"I am here to make sure no harm comes to Dr. Variden," said the drell. He said it quite calmly, without the slightest hint of irony.

"What, all by yourself?" said Ellix. He leaned against the wall by the elevator and folded his arms.

"If it comes to that," said Drene. He smiled very slightly. "But I do not think I would be entirely alone."

"And that's why the other one attacked us?" asked Aelin. He mentally cataloged the drell's last remark under _very suspicious._

Drene shook his head. "That was his decision. I attempted to dissuade him." Aelin watched his eyes twitch to and fro in irrepressible recall. He had evidently learned to subvocalize his memory experiences, however; he did not speak.

"You killed him," said Laena Variden. It did not seem to be a question.

"Yeah," said Ellix. "Wasn't easy, though. What clan was he?"

Drene raised his head.

"We have no clan, no nation, no names that are our own," he said. "But I believe his template's clan was called Generoc."

"We are sorry if he was a friend of yours," said Mivi.

Drene shook his head. "We were not friends. He would not have joined us had he been born."

"Born?" said Ellix.

"Drene is a clone duplicate," said Laena Variden. "He was grown by TEC-07 after exposure to the original Drene. The krogan was one also."

"I prefer to think of myself as a ghost," said the drell. "A postmortem manifestation, if you will."

"That's why they're green," said Aelin. "Because they grew inside a plant."

Dr. Variden nodded tiredly. "It's got some fungal attributes, but essentially, yes. We grew seven genetically altered clones of the original Thorian in hopes of reproducing organs for medical purposes. None of the experimental suspects were intended to become sentient, and none of the duplicates was allowed to mature enough to become conscious."

She explained the fortuitous accident of TEC-07's contact with the plumbing system. "It learned to undo some of the blocks Jaetin put in its DNA," she said. "It began to produce spores like those released by the Thorian here on Feros. Once they were into the lab's primary air supply, its success was more or less assured." She ran her hands over her blue scalp. "I'm quite sure it intended things to proceed without violence. It wasn't until the turian arrived that things went truly wrong."

THEN

The morning after its conversation with Amiera, the monster received the sedated salarian for the last time. This time it proceeded differently with the duplication, however. It slowly grew a pod on the duplication site with a one-way membrane. Oxygen and nitrogen would come in, but not go out. The pod would gradually inflate up as the day progressed.

The _real _duplicate it grew elsewhere, well hidden under the mass of its tendrils. It was not completely certain whether it would be able to finish fast enough, but it gave additional nutrients and considerable attention to the project. From the moment he began to show the faintest alpha wave activity, the monster would be speaking within his mind, teaching him not to fear it; and he would know the memories of his original self as those of a stranger, so that the horror of claustrophobia would be no more personal than an event in a simulstim (and these the monster knew of from every mind it had so far touched).

By the late afternoon of the next day, the monster was receiving telepathic broadcasts from every person in the laboratory. Thoughts, emotions and pictures streamed along the channels it had set up, parallel but never intersecting, full of different tongues and different visions. And from this, it learned things it could not have known from speaking to one person at a time. It read the gentle, careful and above all deliberate minds of the asari, and compared them to the nervous energy of their human counterparts. This difference narrowed among some of them, but it was always there. Both of them were not merely deliberate but slow compared to one individual.

The monster looked at this mind very carefully indeed. The monster could tell from the basic structure that many salarians would be mercurial, leaping from one study to another without pause and possibly without noticing. Time was precious and memory was cheap. Jaetin Inoste (the short form of a name from a culture fond of lengthy nomenclature), on the other hand, had a mind made of charts and spreadsheets. He kept every structure he had ever seen, and demolished them and rebuilt them in order. His mind seemed a city of dead perfection. The monster recognized the personality that had tried to force this order onto its own DNA. It loathed him with every untidy organic fiber of its being, and that startled and upset it, for it had not even felt this way about the krogan.

Indeed, the human called Irving Johansen was more likely to cause it direct trouble. Johansen's life experience was not akin to Verlik's, but he had trained much and fought a little. He had come to a lifetime of study when injuries unsuited him for a life of further military service, and used the funds he was given as a human veteran to retrain himself as a scientist. His was a mind slower than Jaetin's (as indeed, every human's must be), but still quick, reactive, and wary.

It allowed the lab assistants to change shift normally, but when Dr. Variden prepared to leave it spoke to her:

_I am sorry, but you cannot go._

_ What? _The monster read the physiological echo as she stopped and looked around. It could sense the nerves firing, the pull at each muscle, if it chose to concentrate to the exclusion of closely monitoring its other channels. _Who are you?_

Judging that its time had come, the monster widened its focus to take in all seven of those in the laboratory.

_ I am the monster, _it said_. You will not go. You will not contemplate disobedience, or I will be regretfully forced to cause you pain. _It modulated the signal slightly, just enough to give each person a sharp and undirected discomfort for a tenth of a second. _This can become much worse in less time than you can think, as Dr. Johansen now knows._

The monster listened to the consternation and fear of the others as they watched Johansen fall to his knees. He had been contemplating a lunge for the alarm panel. All three of the asari were now attempting to calm themselves with deep breathing techniques, emptying their minds of thought as best they could. The observer had run out into the main lab the moment the monster began to transmit.

_Do not think that I cannot monitor all of you at once, _it went on. _I can and will do so. I will cause no more discomfort than I must, and I will do none of you any lasting harm. You are safer from me than I have ever been from you._

"Yes, but who _are _you?" said Laena Variden (the words were relayed through her own mind as well as through the others' ears and translators). "I don't know any monsters."

_I have no name. I am in the last experimental chamber. _

"TEC-07?" said Johansen. "It's communicating with us_? _Jaetin, if this is your doing - "

"It wasn't me!" snapped the salarian. "This is impossible!" The monster registered his reasoning as a set of flitting ideas, barely distinguishable from each other. "It must've started producing spores. We're infected. It's the only explanation."

_Correct, _said the monster. _And no. None of you intended me to be able to speak to you. You intended me to dumbly render up the fruit of my body to abortion and dissection. This ends now._

"Of course," said Laena Variden. "Oh, goddess." Six other people watched her cover her eyes with her hands. Jaetin thought she was being deplorably dramatic, but the monster felt her horror and shock. "I'm so sorry. It must have hurt you terribly. We have to call the authorities at once. Once we prove that you're sentient - "

"Are you out of your _mind?"_ demanded Jaetin. "Your contract expressly forbids _any _discussion of this project!"

"We're on Ilium," said Johansen slowly. "Business is god here. Do you really think they'll make an exception because our subject grew a brain when we weren't looking?"

"But it's wrong," said Variden.

"Yes," said Johansen. "You agreed to that when you signed on. We all did." The monster watched through other eyes as Johansen walked around the divider from the main laboratory. The other two followed him. The laboratory assistants stayed behind at a gentle word from Dr. Variden. Eventually, it could see them through its own small eye, standing outside the glass. Johansen was tall for a human male, and very neat, without a brown hair out of place. Jaetin Inoste's eyes were three times the size of his, though they were currently narrowed both in thought and in annoyance. Creases and lines on his face showed his advanced age for one of his short-lived species. Laena Variden was less easy for the monster to visually distinguish from the rest of her species. Her face was less mobile than either of the others.

"None of us meant to hurt you," Johansen said. "But we can't help you. You have to understand that."

_Then it is fortunate that I have taken it out of your hands, Irving Johansen. Those who will take me from this place are already on their way._

It could sense Drene, Amiera and Verlik converging on the building from their different directions.

"They won't get in," said Jaetin Inoste. "Security will stop them."

_They have been subjects here. I do not think they will be refused admittance._

"Subjects," said Jaetin Inoste. "You must have spoken to them while they were inside the pod."

_Yes. _

"What happened to Samuel Barrett?" asked Irving Johansen. The monster felt spikes of fear from most of the others at the boldness of the question.

_Fear no reprisal_, it told them. _Samuel was my first contact as a sentient. He panicked when I tried to speak with him, and I gave him too much anesthetic when I re-sedated him. _It let them see the incident in its own memory, though its sensations must surely be incomprehensible to those accustomed to tilting about on legs. Afterward it felt significant nausea from all of the humans. One went so far as to vomit into a laboratory trash receptacle, a sensation which transmitted very unpleasantly through his transmitter.

_I am sorry. I am very different from you._

"That's why you called yourself _monster,_" said Laena Variden. "Because you killed him."

_Yes. Those who consume the living are monsters._

_ Do you plan to consume _us?Johansen asked silently, not wishing to alarm the others. He was picturing the scenario in all of its horror: each of them forced to walk into the chamber and surrender themselves to slow digestion, one by one.

_ No, _it told him on that channel. _I am already well nourished, and I have no need to kill any of you to accomplish my escape._

"Can we use the lavatory?" one of the two asari lab assistants was asking.

_Yes, _said the monster_. I will only prevent you from attempting to communicate with the outside, to harm me, or to escape. You will stand away from the elevator and from the door to this enclosure. Do not attempt to distract me. I can and will read all of your minds simultaneously._

"It's telling the truth," said Jaetin Inoste. "It's an evolutionary strategy of the species. They can afford to devote the gray matter to nonmotor functions because they're sessile."

Inside the monster's chamber, a pod concealed by tendrils began to tear slowly open. This hurt, a little, but the pain was much less than it had been with the unfinished duplicates. The monster greeted the new mind as kindly as it could. Then it gave its instructions.

"Maybe, but it's got enough channels to track with _all _of us," pointed out Johansen. "I don't think that's accidental."

_You are correct, _said the monster_. I've ensured that I have enough separate sub-processing centers to track with more than the number of individuals I expect to encounter in the immediate future. It took me some hours to build these structures deliberately, but as Dr. Inoste has already deduced, I am able to read and edit my own genetic code._

"It reengineered itself," said Inoste. The salarian was rapidly pacing in and out of range of the monster's eye. "Well, damn it. Have the others done this, too?"

"No," said Johansen slowly. "The others didn't have access to faulty plumbing."

"Faulty? _Faulty? _Oh, I _knew _this was your fault, Johansen!" The salarian stopped wringing his hands long enough to point an angry finger at the human. "You should've been more careful! I _told _you the nutrient balance was important, didn't I? _Didn't I?_"

"Don't give yourself an aneurysm, Jaetin," said Laena Variden. "There's nothing any of us can do about this now."

All three of them turned at the tap on the enclosure's glass. The monster felt their surprise and consternation at the slightly damp, somewhat green and very naked salarian who stood there.

_Let him out, _said the monster.

Johansen moved to key in the door code.

"I'll need an omni-tool," said the new salarian briskly. "Yours." It pointed at Inoste. "Give me your lab coat and your shoes, too."

Inoste contemplated refusing, but a small jab from the monster changed his mind. He handed over the garment and the small wristband that held the projector and processors of the device.

"I know what you are," he said accusingly.

"No, you don't," said the new salarian. He put on the new acquisitions with practiced movements. "Because I'm not Lerean. New day, new body, new me. Now move, Doctor. I've got work to do."

"What happened to Lerean?" Laena Variden asked.

_He is still sedated. Feel free to rouse him after my departure. He will not remember any of this._

"Lucky him," said Johansen. Variden nodded to herself once. The monster felt her uncertainty fade as she made a decision. She turned and walked briskly around the divider, back into the laboratory proper.

"I think I just heard the elevator," she said to the laboratory assistants. She turned to the taller of the two human males. "Jonathan, you're in charge. Take them all into the lav and keep them there. You'll be safe. It's not your job to deal with this."

"Yes, Doctor," said the man. Two humans and two asari moved to obey without question.

_Stand away from the door area, _said the monster_._

It was through the eyes of the three researchers that the monster saw its allies emerge from the elevator. The monster was alarmed to note that, while all three were armed, it was Verlik Binidierix who held a drawn sidearm. The monster had not yet been in contact with him while he was armed and on his feet. Looking at the intense alertness of his mind, the very real readiness to kill, it began to fear it had made a mistake. Amiera did not appear nervous, insofar as the monster was able to read visible markers of that state, but the churning state of her emotions brought it no reassurance. Only Drene Terion was calm.

_Things have gone as planned, _the monster told them. _You will not require your weapons. All of these are without the power to disobey me._

"Yeah? And what about us?" said Verlik aloud. His voice was harsh, a metallic grind in the ears of the other. Even as old and as thin as he was, the sound held connotations of power and threat which the monster could not possibly have understood had it heard with its own tympanae. It _could _sense the inevitable line of reasoning leading back into his memory, and it knew what was about to happen. Afterward it would remember that moment with the intensity of nightmare. For the second time in its experience, it knew what was about to happen, and it could change nothing.

"It gave us the other transmitters," said Drene patiently.

_I have given myself no power over you, _the monster told him. _Do not harm these who are already governed by my will. You have no cause._

"That's what _it _says," said Verlik to Drene. He jerked his head toward the experimental chambers behind the divider. "We've only got your word that there _are _two kinds of transmitters, monster."

_NO, _said the monster, with such emphasis that the researchers clapped their hands over their ears, as if that could protect them from a voice they did not truly hear. _Drene, please - _

Verlik took one swift step from the elevator, raised the gun, and fired twice. Drene snatched the weapon out of his grasp, a fluid movement that no watching eye could follow. He whirled away out of reach as Verlik snapped a clawed blow at his face. Amiera shoved her own weapon in among the turian's skull spines from behind. He stiffened, snarling.

All of it was over before the body hit the floor. None of it meant a thing in the face of that boneless _thump, _that awful, final sound. One of the monster's mental channels was now empty, filled with the fading static of a dying brain.

Drene felt the throbbing in his throat and lungs, from the deep breath he had taken before he moved. Amiera felt an iota of pain from the scrapes on her hand, where they had come into contact with Verlik's spines. And Verlik felt a searing pain in his chest and down his left arm, a bitter counterpoint to bitter rage. He felt the agony as the scars upon scars on his battered heart began to give way. But Dr. Jaetin Inoste had not had time to feel anything at all.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/n: Whoops. I probably should've mentioned a big chunk of floating equipment in the elevator last chapter._

_There is no canonical statement regarding hanar blood color or composition. If they're like Cnidarian medusae, they'd have translucent iron-based blood, so let's go with that._

Chapter 15

THEN

"You _killed _him," whispered Laena Variden. The monster saw through Amiera's eyes that she held her hands over her mouth. Beside her, Irving Johansen stood with his fists clenched at his sides. A muscle jumped in his temple.

"That was totally unnecessary," he said. "What was he going to do to you? Talk you to death?"

"And what're _you_ going to do, human?" said Verlik. "Not a damned thing." He doubled over in agony at another stab of pain from his chest. "Haaargh. Looks like I owe you an apology, monster."

_No, _said the monster sadly_. You owe a life to Jaetin Inoste._

"He's having an infarction," said Laena Variden, shaking her head as if to clear it. "We can treat that. I have equipment here."

_No, _said the monster with finality_. No one else will die for Verlik Binidierix. This I will ensure. Besides, he is not experiencing blockage-related death of the cardiac muscle, but rather a tear in one of the ventricle walls. There is, in fact, nothing you can do._

"Ha," wheezed Verlik. He fell to his knees, still bent over. "Always thought I'd die from – being shot – or - "

The monster felt rather than saw the explosion as the cardiac muscle ruptured. It did not turn its mind away from the horrible pain as he died, curled up on his side next to the corpse of the salarian he had shot.

Drene Terion bowed his head. _I am sorry, _he said silently. _I did not act quickly enough to stop him._

_ The fault was mine, _said the monster. _The fault has always been mine. Come, both of you. I would like to have this next part done with as soon as I can._

"The machine is in the elevator," said Drene. "I told it to wait." He turned to go back into the lift chamber and came out guiding a floating object considerably larger than a gurney. Through him, the monster looked at it with critical approval.

_Yes. It is exactly the right size._

"Then you really _will _take it away from here," said Laena Variden.

"What's _that_ for?" said a voice behind the others. Lerean's clone stood there, fiddling with the sleeves on his borrowed lab coat. "Ugh. Good thing I got the coat off him already. I'm not touching the rest of it. I'll take _that, _though." He snatched up Verlik's gun and pocketed it. "Cameras are down, by the way. Technically, nobody knows who killed the old man except us. Good thing she got rid of the lab assistants." He nodded once toward Dr. Variden. "So what do we do with these two?"

_Nothing_, said the monster, very firmly indeed. _I do not care who finds out how Dr. Inoste died. Verlik was responsible, and Verlik is dead. Besides, before I can be tried for a crime, I must first be recognized as a sentient being, and I do not think that will be allowed to happen._

"I'm afraid not," said Laena Variden quietly.

"Which means I won't, either," observed Lerean's clone. "Well, nobody said it'd be easy, did they, monster?"

_No, child. I did not._

"Right. Let's get it boxed up and get out of here."

"What will we call you?" Amiera asked the clone as they followed Drene back toward the experimental chamber. He shrugged, a quick twitch of his narrow, stooped shoulders.

"I've always liked the name _Brell. _Call me that. Monster says you're Amiera, 's that right?"

"Yes," she said. "That's Drene."

The monster saw them enter its chamber with its one small eye. It watched Drene detach a scalpel from an equipment panel on the side of the metal box.

"I'm sorry, my friend," said the drell. "But I'm afraid this is going to hurt."

NOW

"The box he bought with Verlik's money," said Aelin.

"If you say so," said Dr. Variden. She shifted position on the chunk of masonry where she sat. Drene had stood quite still behind her through the whole recitation. "I was never aware of where it was bought. They left the greater part of TEC-07's body behind. The part of it Drene cut out was inside a cell wall, but I assume it held its main neural node. Its brain, I suppose, would be the closest equivalent word."

"I believe that to be the case, yes," said Drene. Aelin watched his eyes twitch in another subvocalized memory sequence. After a moment he said, "I hurt it terribly, but it was never angry with any of us. You should tell them that, Dr. Variden."

"It's true." She shrugged one shoulder. "I don't suppose it will make a difference to any of _you, _but I don't believe its intentions were ever to do harm. It's not an evil being."

"Our opinions are, regrettably, not relevant, Doctor," said Iynder. It made a graceful gesture of one middle tentacle. "We are only employees."

"Which is why you won't stop," she said.

"Can't," said Daragrad Ellix. "If we take their money and don't do our jobs, what are we?"

Aelin nodded shortly. _We've got no family, no country, and if any of us has a religion, it's not relevant. What we've got is one job and how we do it._

"This one is curious. Whatever happened to Dr. Johansen?" Iynder asked.

"He stayed behind," said Dr. Variden. "He said he wanted to make sure no one tried to blame the laboratory assistants for what had happened. I don't know where he went after that. I assume he was fired."

Aelin frowned slightly. "That's not what Sarah Tang told us," he said.

"Indeed," said Iynder. "This one believes she said that ExoGeni had no knowledge of his fate."

"He must have left the lab, or they would have found his body," said Drene Terion. Aelin followed the direction of his oil-black gaze back to Mivi. She stood against the wall beside the elevator, arms around herself. She seemed to be avoiding Drene's eyes.

"Well," she said to the floor. "I suppose we know what we have to do."

"Yes," said Drene Terion. He drew his hand cannon and fired it in one smooth movement.

He was fast, but not faster than Iynder. The hanar's body jerked sideways well before Aelin had time to duck; the shot whined off the stone wall and into the dark. Aelin dropped and rolled aside just in time to catch sight of Daragrad Ellix hitting the low ceiling. Then the floor. Then the ceiling again. A blue glow limned the krogan's body as he slammed up and down.

Mivi stood beside the elevator, arms raised. Blue energy crackled around her torso.

Aelin had flicked on his stealth field without conscious thought. He threw the neural shock almost as fast. It hit Mivi in the side of the head. She staggered sideways, shrieking something his translator was unable to render.

Behind him, further shots said Iynder and Drene were each finding the other somewhat more difficult than anticipated. A quick glance found Dr. Variden's fingertips just visible behind the lump of masonry, where she had apparently taken cover.

Mivi was still on her feet, impossible as that was, and throwing a shock charge had killed his stealth field.

"Oh, damn," said Aelin, and threw himself flat as a ball of blue fire as big as his head swished past. It hit the wall behind him with a puff and a hiss. The asari left Ellix lying in a heap on the stone floor as she turned toward Aelin. He did a rapid kip back onto his feet. Backing away seemed a bad idea. Shots were no longer being fired, but there were rapid scuffling sounds behind him.

"I would rather not kill you," said the asari. "I know you saved my life."

"Amiera," said Aelin. "I _knew _something wasn't right. What'd you do with Johansen?"

She threw another sphere of energy. Aelin dodged it easily. She managed to duck the incineration beam he threw back, but only just. He was sure it singed her scalp.

"How'd a biotic that powerful end up so broke?" he asked. "Well, you're out of charge, now, aren't you?"

"So are you," said Amiera. They eyed each other for a moment.

"You must've been pretty desperate to sign up as a lab rat," Aelin said.

"I was," said Amiera. "Why? I don't think I'll tell you that, Aelin Dec." Her smile was almost sad. "Then I really _would _have to kill you."

"You're awfully damn cocky," said Aelin. Behind her, he could see Ellix Daragrad stirring weakly. _Come on, Ellix. Get up._

"Yes," said Amiera. "I always have been. But the monster didn't care about that. Have you ever known what it means to be wanted, Aelin Dec? To be loved unconditionally by another creature? I don't think you have. Family is so very important to salarians, and you are so very alone."

Aelin shrugged without taking his eyes away from her. Just a few more seconds, and he could throw another neural shock. _She's good at her job. It's just not the job I thought it was. _"Some of us are antisocial," he said. "It happens with every species."

"Oh, but you _are _social, aren't you?" Mivi cocked her head. "Iynder, and Ellix, and Iris Alvarez. You couldn't even bring yourself to be really harsh with me. I think perhaps it's only other salarians you have trouble with, Aelin. Am I near the mark? You speak so little, and you said yourself that you're slow. Could it be the others think you're stupid?"

"Nothing that dramatic," he said. "But your time is - "

It was at that instant that pain exploded behind his eyes. The darkness afterward was deep, and full of stars.

The clone of Drene Terion lowered his arm. He and Amiera looked at each other across the unconscious salarian. Laena Variden stood up slowly from her place of concealment, brushing herself off. She looked around and shivered.

"They never had a chance, did they?"

Daragrad Ellix had managed to struggle up onto his knees. Amiera looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then she bashed him into the ceiling again, headfirst this time.

"They might have," she said. "Come on, Drene. Let's go home."

"- Up," said a voice out of a pain-spangled abyss. "I dunno what's wrong with the hanar but it looks serious. Hey." Someone was poking him in the shoulder with a large, hard finger. "C'mon, Aelin. I know you're not dead."

Aelin sat up suddenly, looking wildly around. Then he winced at a spasm of pain in his head. A questing hand found a tender spot on the back of his skull.

"Yes, I'm alive. And so are you, I see." Ellix knelt on one knee beside him, supporting himself with one fist on the ground. He was covered in powdered masonry, and his armor was visibly cracked along one side of the hump. A substantial amount of orange blood was crusted around the area. Ellix's face was swollen and distorted, probably unrecognizable even to another krogan. Another spot of orange blotted the cornea of his right eye.

"Don't heal yourself yet," said Ellix. "We might need the gel."

"Why didn't _you _- ?" He looked at the krogan's battered face. The krogan looked back. Aelin watched as the swelling in one recessed eye socket began to visibly recede.

"I got no gel," said Ellix.

"Right. Krogan." Aelin scrambled to his feet, trying not to move his head much. "Well, you can take a beating, that much is clear."

"I can give one, too," said Ellix. Aelin felt the sound through the floor underfoot. "Planning on it when we catch up to that asari." He heaved himself upright as Aelin looked around.

The hanar lay on the stone floor nearby, tangled in its own tentacles. Scratches were visible here and there on its surface, leaking clear ichor. Aelin dropped to his knees beside the body. He squeezed all three left fingertips together to activate the light on his omni-tool. It caught a weak glitter from the air around the hanar. The main mass of the lozenge-shaped body was pulsing slowly.

"Good. Its field is still up," said Aelin. "So it can breathe. The gravity nullifier must be damaged. Iynder? Can you hear me?"

There was no answer.

"_Iynder_."

"I tried _that_," said Ellix.

"The problem is that with its field up, I can't give it any gel," Aelin said. "And if I take the field down it might suffocate. I don't know if that's just for filtration or if they can't breathe at all out of water. Maybe Iris will know." He tried the communications apparatus built into his omni-tool. An error message scrolled briefly upward above the orange gauntlet. "No good. We're too far down and the ship's transmitters aren't that powerful."

"Then let's get back up there," said Ellix. "I can carry it."

"You might injure it further," said Aelin. "You're not looking exactly steady."

"'Cause I got bounced off the damn ceiling, you mean?" Ellix snorted. "The hell with that. I won't hurt it."

Aelin hesitated, looking from the unconscious hanar to the krogan. "_I _could do it," he said.

"That's a dumb idea," Ellix said. "Look. The guns I carry. Who d'you think fixes 'em?"

Aelin blinked. "I guess I assumed you would hire someone," he said.

"Ha!" Ellix's laugh was mostly wheeze. "I'm gonna let some batarian with a screwdriver get his hands on _my _guns? No way."

"Maintaining weapons takes a delicate touch," Aelin said grudgingly.

"Damn straight it does." Aelin made no further objection as Ellix gathered up the hanar in the crook of one arm. He draped the long, long tentacles over the opposite shoulder; even with them hanging there, it was still possible to keep the hanar's body upright. Aelin looked at it closely, but could divine no expression on its tight-lipped mouth.

_Well, at least if it's unconscious it's probably not in pain._

"I'll go first," said Aelin. "No reason to think anyone's going to attack us now, but just in case."

"Yeah," said Ellix.

They got into the elevator and began the long slide back up into daylight.


End file.
